


30 Days of True Life

by hollycomb



Category: South Park
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-20
Updated: 2012-08-20
Packaged: 2017-11-12 13:36:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 39,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/491630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hollycomb/pseuds/hollycomb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>These are 8 short fics that I wrote for Sekrit's "30 Days of True Life" challenge on Tumblr. Each fic is based on the title of an episode of True Life. All 8 are m/m romance stories; 6 of them are Stan/Kyle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I'm Horny in Miami

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Craig learns something about his friend Clyde during their trip to Miami.

Craig had suggested splitting up for the evening, because if they were together people would think they were _together_. Clyde was agreeable, and he left for some club that Craig was fairly confident he wouldn't get into while Craig departed for a gay bar. They'd both come to Miami to get laid. Clyde had wanted to go during spring break, and Craig had scoffed at this. It was October, relatively low on tourists and not too hot.

After blowing a guy in a bathroom stall, which wasn't as glamorous as Craig had imagined, he headed back to the room feeling weird. He wished he hadn't swallowed, but in the heat of the moment it had seemed like the thing to do. He'd had too much to drink and not enough to eat. It was just barely midnight, so he figured he'd have the room to himself, maybe order a grilled cheese from the 24-hour room service menu, maybe watch some TV.

He didn't figure on Clyde being in the room, alone, fucking himself with a roll of Mentos.

Clyde had been prone to delayed reactions ever since they were kids, and it sort of complimented Craig's bitchy reluctance to immediately respond to anything, which was maybe why they'd become friends despite having nothing else in common except, apparently, enjoying the feeling of being fucked in the ass.

"Shit," Clyde said when he'd finally regained his bearings and slid the Mentos out. He stuffed them under a pillow, which was weird, and yanked the blankets up over his bare legs and naked dick.

"Uh," Craig said.

"It's just!" Clyde said, his face getting very red. The TV was on, and he seemed to be watching an old Western. "I didn't -- they wouldn't -- I didn't get into that club," Clyde said, as if that explained everything. "What are you -- why are you back so early? Jesus, Craig! Close the door!"

"Oh." Craig did, not sure that he wanted to be in the room with Clyde, who was fidgeting like he couldn't quite get comfortable sans-Mentos.

"Quit looking at me like that!" Clyde said.

"Like what?"

"Like I just had -- Mentos in my ass!"

"Well. Uh, you did."

"Just quit looking at me!" Clyde said, but Craig couldn't seem to. Looking at Clyde now, he felt like he was still seeing him lying there with his legs spread and his ass slightly elevated as he plowed himself with Mentos -- some kind of fruit flavor, the packaging was pink.

"Are you gay or something?" Craig asked. He'd always kind of wondered. Sometimes when they got high and watched movies at Craig's apartment Clyde tried to cuddle him while pretending to be asleep.

"No!" Clyde said. He pulled the blankets up to his chin, hiding his shoulders. "I'd never even. That was spontaneous."

"Oh." Craig said. "I'm going to order some grilled cheese. You want some?"

Clyde scowled. "Yes," he said.

The only grilled cheese option on the hotel's menu was gruyere and sardines with arugula on rye. Clyde picked the sardines off. Craig tried to eat them but ended up doing the same.

"So did you like it?" Craig asked while they ate, sitting on their separate beds.

"Like what?" Clyde asked. "The--"

"Mentos."

"It was okay," Clyde said. "Kind of hurt at first."

"You were probably doing it wrong," Craig said, annoyed. He had a lot of sex during his freshman year of college, and most of it was painful and humiliating in one way or another. By sophomore year he was more picky. He no longer slept with CU students or faculty. Clyde lived in a frat house and presumably banged chicks. Craig had only personally seen evidence that he slobbered on them drunkenly at parties.

"What was wrong?" Clyde asked. "I used lotion."

"Ugh, lotion. You should get proper lube. Astroglide or something. There's a reason it exists, you know. Lotion is fine, but it's not ideal."

"Well, I wasn't sitting here wondering about the most ideal sex I could have with my Mentos, okay, I just had the idea and went for it."

"And the shape," Craig said, glancing hatefully at the pillow the Mentos were stowed under. "It's not -- I mean, that thing has corners, kind of."

"Yeah," Clyde said, squirming. "But it was interesting."

"Interesting."

"Yeah, Craig, interesting. Don't do that thing where you just start repeating everything I say like you can't believe how dumb I am."

Clyde put his sandwich plate on the table between their beds and rolled away from Craig, still under the blankets. Craig felt like a jerk, which was so unfair.

"I blew a guy tonight and he didn't reciprocate," Craig said. "Who does that?"

Clyde said nothing, but Craig could feel him listening.

"I'd fuck you," Craig said, though he didn't like topping. He was feeling generous.

"Leave me alone!" Clyde said, muffled beneath the blankets.

"Fine, but I'm just saying. "You didn't come. And an actual dick has some give, you know, that I think you'd appreciate, after the hardness of the--"

"I don't want you to say the word Mentos ever again!" Clyde shouted.

"What flavor were they?" Craig asked, smirking.

"Fuck you, Craig!"

"Oh, well," Craig said, having an idea. "You could."

Clyde was silent while Craig ate the last of his sandwich, leaving the crusts. He was totally indifferent to Clyde's response to that remark. His sudden queasiness was purely the result of some other guy's come sitting in his stomach, mixing with sardines.

When Clyde finally peeked out from under the blankets he looked at Craig so shyly that Craig wanted to apologize for offering his ass, muddying their friendship, and planning to torment Clyde with random gifts of Mentos for the rest of their lives.

"Maybe your fingers?" Clyde said. "On -- in me? And then I could blow you."

"Fair enough," Craig said, and he wanted to skip across the short distance to Clyde's bed in his excitement, but he took his time setting his plate aside, wiping his hands on his napkin and retrieving the bottle of Astroglide that he'd packed for the trip. He'd paid for the checked bag fee just for this.

What happened took place entirely under the blankets on Clyde's bed, and it was warm and slow and kind of nice. Clyde writhed with unashamed gratitude on Craig's fingers, sighing his name, clenching in nervous spasms and then hard, randomly, almost painfully so, but Craig kept going until Clyde had come in his own hand while Craig teased his prostate. Clyde's blow job technique proved unsurprisingly horrible, but his mouth was so wet, and Craig came fast, already halfway there just from helping Clyde get off.

"You didn't have to swallow," Craig said when Clyde crawled up toward him.

"Craig, seriously," Clyde said. His face was hovering over Craig's in a worrying way. Craig was all blissed out from his orgasm, weak, wanting to be kissed by somebody, and Clyde's lips were right there, swollen from sucking him. "Whose come am I going to swallow if not yours?"

That didn't really make sense, Craig thought, but he didn't say so, because Clyde was kissing him, tasting like gruyere and spunk, which felt so obvious: of course Clyde would taste this way. Of course they were kissing. Of course Craig let Clyde roll him into a tight hug and fell asleep there, in Clyde's arms.

He woke up in the middle of the night because something wasn't right. Something was off, feeling very wrong. It wasn't Clyde, who was warm and soft and slumped against him. It was the pillow. Craig reached underneath it, found the Mentos and flung them to the floor like they were a villainous romantic rival. He felt guilty after doing it. It had actually been kind of sweet, Clyde and those Mentos. His first time. Craig regretted that he would never be able to tell anyone this story. It was just too sacred now.


	2. I Can't Breathe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stan gives Kyle a harp and is forced to quit the football team.

Everyone in South Park played football unless they were a born towel boy (Butters) or male cheerleader (Cartman). Most weren’t very good, so it was always clear from a young age which of them would become local stars. Stan was the only one of his generation who was great, and people were eager to see what he would do in high school, but during his third pre-season practice he had an asthma attack and his doctor banned him from playing.

Kyle had quit football after seventh grade and joined the marching band at the start of high school. He played the flute, and also, at home, secretly, the harp. Kyle’s harp was something Stan’s family had inherited when Stan’s grandfather died, and nobody knew where it had come from or why Marvin owned it. They were going to sell it, but it was in relatively bad shape and Kyle had become kind of obsessed with it, fingering it idly whenever he was in Stan’s living room, so Stan convinced his parents to let him give it to Kyle for his bar mitzvah. Stan had waited until after the party, blindfolded Kyle and brought him up to his bedroom, where Stan had placed the harp in the corner, a big white and blue bow wrapped around it.

After being instructed to remove his blindfold, Kyle stared at the harp in silence for almost ten seconds before turning to grab Stan and kiss him.

So that was the state of things at the start of their freshman year: Stan had lost football, the one thing he felt he was good at, and Kyle was kissing him randomly and practicing his harp.

“You should play guitar while I do this,” Kyle said one day after school. Stan was lying on Kyle’s bed feeling sorry for himself. There was a football game that night, and Stan refused to attend as a spectator.

“I’m not that good at guitar,” Stan said. “I was better at the video game version.”

“You could get better! At least it’s not a wind instrument.”

“What?”

“So you won’t have to blow.” Kyle made a motion like he was holding an invisible flute up to his lips. “You know. Use your lungs.”

“I know what blowing is, Kyle.”

Kyle raised his eyebrows, and Stan’s face got hot. They didn’t touch each other’s dicks. It seemed impossible, but it was something Stan thought about theoretically, like time travel.

“What do you miss most about football?” Kyle asked him when they were walking home from school one day, past the stadium.

“Being good at it,” Stan said.

“Right, but — that’s all? You didn’t love the thing itself?”

“I guess.” Stan rolled his eyes. He hated it when Kyle got like this, therapist-like. “I liked running. I liked not getting tackled. And the strategy,” he added after a moment.

“Well, there you go!” Kyle said. “Strategy. There’s lots of stuff you can apply that to that doesn’t require getting breathless.”

“I want a new body,” Stan said.

“No, you don’t,” Kyle said, and he was blushing when Stan looked over at him.

Kyle began researching strategy games for Stan. They all made Stan feel like a dork, because it wasn’t real strategy that would have to be physically enacted, just pretend stuff for kids. Kyle’s next suggestion was that Stan join the debate team. Stan went to a practice with him to see what it was like, and between Wendy, Cartman, and Kyle, he wasn’t able to actually speak at any point. Not that he wanted to.

By Halloween, Stan was in a proper funk. The JV football team was doing well. Kenny had replaced him as quarterback.

“I’m not trick-or-treating this year,” Stan said.

“Fine,” Kyle said.

“Really?” Stan said.

“Yeah,” Kyle said. “Trick-or-treating just depresses me. It always has. You guys could pig out, and I had to be so cautious. It gave me anxiety.”

“I never knew that,” Stan said. They were on Kyle’s bed, listening to the doorbell ring downstairs. It was barely dark out, just the little kids making their rounds.

“Well,” Kyle said. “Now you know.”

They opened Kyle’s bedroom window, and he played eerie harp music for the benefit of the trick-or-treaters, the lights in the room turned off. After a while Stan got up off the bed and sat behind Kyle on his little stool, which was really too small for the both of them. Stan had to squeeze in close, his thighs snug around Kyle’s, arms wrapped around his waist.

“I’m sorry I was never sensitive to your candy angst,” Stan said. “I didn’t even think about that. I mean, I did, because if you ate a lot of candy, I’d worry, but—”

“Really?” Kyle had stopped playing, but his fingers were still on the strings. “You worried about me when we were kids?”

“Dude, did I not steal a kidney for you?”

Stan could feel Kyle grin, as if his facial muscles had minutely shifted the position of his whole body. Kyle played again, less eerily now, and Stan licked the side of his neck. Kyle’s breath hitched.

“Yeah,” Kyle said, so Stan did it again, just under the point of Kyle’s jaw this time. Kyle plucked at the harp aimlessly while Stan licked him, his breath coming out choppy. “I have such a boner right now,” Kyle whispered, and then, pressing his knees together, “Sorry.”

“I think I want to be good at giving you boners,” Stan said, also whispering. “I think that’s my thing.”

“God,” Kyle said. “Yes, yeah, that’s – one of your things, I’d say, I think—”

He went quiet when Stan reached down to touch him. It sent a shock through him: that any part of Kyle could be that hard, that hot, even through his jeans. Kyle opened his knees and let out his breath, his hands dropping away from the harp.

“That’s okay?” Stan said, right into Kyle’s ear. He nodded.

They could hear kids laughing outside, and Stan’s mom answering the door, complimenting their costumes. Kyle’s breath got harsher as Stan rubbed him, and Stan’s did, too. He reached down to cup Kyle’s balls and Kyle arched into Stan’s palm, his ass lifting off the stool for a moment. That was when Stan started to worry that he was going to have an asthma attack.

He was determined not to. Fuck that. Nothing was taking this away from him, not when he’d just started to suspect he might be really good at it.

He made himself calm down, squeezing the insides of Kyle’s thighs with both hands, breathing against his neck. Kyle whined and groped for Stan’s hand, bringing it back to his dick. Stan laughed, still afraid that he couldn’t handle this, either, that he wouldn’t be able to handle anything good.

“I feel like my head’s gonna blow off,” Stan said, not wanting to admit the real problem. “Tell me something that’ll calm me down.”

“Uh,” Kyle said. He was still holding Stan’s hand onto his cock, pressing it down more firmly. “When you gave me – this, the harp – I decided, um. That I loved you.”

“You decided?”

“Yeah.”

Kyle came in his pants thirty seconds later, and Stan was calm as he held him and kissed him through it, thinking about how that seemed so right: Kyle would decide to love someone, weighing the pros and cons, making an informed choice. Or he would tell himself he had, anyway.

Stan didn’t have an asthma attack that night, but the fact that he had his inhaler in his backpack was a comforting thought when Kyle knelt between his legs and mouthed him through his pants until he’d come, too.

“Was that slutty?” Kyle asked when they were in bed together, staring up at the full moon. They’d closed the window, and the trick-or-treaters were long gone, only mischief makers still out.

“Nope,” Stan said. “Want to know when I decided?”

“Yeah,” Kyle said. Stan could see the corner of his smile. He knew Kyle understood what he meant.

“When they were going to sell that harp, and I thought, they can’t, because Kyle loves it.”

“It’s like the kidney all over again.”

“Yeah, sort of. I hope you’ll always want stuff that I can get for you.”

“I will,” Kyle said. He turned over in Stan’s arms and burrowed against his chest, his eyelashes brushing Stan’s throat. “Don’t ever wish for another body,” Kyle said, clutching at the one Stan had.

“Okay. You either.”

“I mean it, Stan. This is the planet I want to colonize. The deserted island I want to live on. Right here, like this.”

“You can have it,” Stan said, and he held Kyle tighter.

“Thanks, dude.”

“Yeah, no problem. You’re welcome.”

In the long history of their sex life, Stan will have only one Kyle-related asthma attack: in the library at college. Too much dust.


	3. I'm Dating Someone Older

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kyle comes out to Stan via a Colin Firth movie.

Stan has been gradually working out that he’s kind of strange when it comes to sex, and he has vague notions of telling Kyle so, but it’s all very hard to articulate. It’s also possible that Kyle won’t want to hear about it. Stan has a lot of sex, mostly with girls from school but sometimes with older women, and a lot of the time when he’s with them or just jerking off he’s thinking about fucking guys. He’s always had an ass fixation, is what he’d like to tell Kyle. He’s coming around on dicks, too, though most of the ones in porn are ugly.

“I got a movie for us to watch,” Kyle says one Friday night when they’re hanging out. They’re sophomores in college and Stan is going through a sober stretch, trying to get his grades up. Sobriety also means not fucking around with women, because he doesn’t like to do so without like eight beers. It’s better to just relax in Kyle’s tidy apartment, Kyle’s roommates out with their girlfriends. Stan still lives in the dorms, and he appreciates the cleanliness of Kyle’s bathroom so very much.

“It’s a gay movie,” Kyle says, turning from the TV with the DVD in his hand.

“Oh,” Stan says. He sits up a little straighter, preparing himself for this moment. It’s not like he’s never thought about it. “Porn?”

“No, not porn!” Kyle scowls at him. “It’s a movie about a man in the sixties who loses his partner and has no avenue for grieving because of the times. I’m gay, by the way.”

“What?” Stan suddenly realizes that is what he’s been wanting to say all these years, but now Kyle has stolen his thunder, or claimed being the gay one for himself, or something.

“Why would you think I’d want to watch gay porn with you?” Kyle asks. His expression is still sour and twisted, as if he’s considering throwing Stan out.

“I was joking,” Stan says. “But you said — you’re gay, you said?”

“Yes, okay, and you don’t have to pretend to be surprised. I just thought I should state it formally, for the record.”

“Is that why we’re watching a gay movie?”

“I thought it might be an appropriate way to broach the subject,” Kyle says. He turns for the DVD player. “Don’t make fun of me, please.”

“Kyle, I’m not. I wouldn’t. Hey.” Stan pats the couch cushion beside him. “Come give me a hug.”

Kyle walks over, still making a face. He drops down and sits stiffly while Stan hugs him, and resists when Stan tries to pull him against his chest. Kyle wiggles free after a few moments.

“It’s not like I thought you would hate me,” Kyle says. He’s blushing now, scooting toward the arm of the couch.

“Oh, I know,” Stan says. “I just. Support you. I love you, dude.”

“Also, I’m seeing someone,” Kyle blurts. “So. You might meet him.”

“Ah.” The rage comes swiftly, without Stan’s permission. Kyle has stolen his opportunity to be gay without seeming like a follower, and now he’s stolen something else, too. “Who?”

“This guy.” Kyle sighs and picks up the DVD remote. “He works for Conoco.”

“The gas station?”

“Stan.” Kyle gives him a look, narrowing his eyes. “No, the company. You know, they’ve got an office in Denver.”

“Okay, great, so he works for an oil company? Wow.”

“He’s not out there fracking in the fucking national forests, he’s a human resources manager! His name is Danny. I think you’ll like him. Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Nothing — I’m not. Is it serious?”

“I don’t fucking know! He’s my first boyfriend.” Kyle is muttering now, looking at the TV. “So do you want to watch this gay movie with me or not?”

“Sure,” Stan says, still angry. After about an hour of stewing in silence, something occurs to him. Human resources at Conoco is, like, the real world. “Wait,” Stan says. “He works for — he doesn’t go here?”

“No,” Kyle says, not bothering to pretend that he doesn’t know what Stan is talking about. “Danny is, well. He’s in his thirties.”

“Thirties?”

“Well, so what?” Kyle’s voice is quickly loud, as if he was prepared to get angry. “I’m twenty!”

“Not for two months! How old is he exactly?”

“What do you care?” The movie is continuing without their attention, sad music swelling.

“Because you’re my friend, and if he’s — just, how old is he, Kyle?”

“Are you feeling protective or something?” Kyle smiles a little. “He’s thirty-six.”

“Oh my God!”

“You fucked that one lady who was forty!”

“She was twenty-seven — what are you talking about?”

“Well, you were seventeen.” Kyle grabs a throw pillow and holds it over his chest huffily, glaring at the TV screen. “Anyway, I’m tired of hiding this from you. I knew you’d blow up.”

“I’m calling your mother,” Stan says, and Kyle whirls on him, trying to hit him. Stan ducks out of the way.

“I’m a grown man,” Kyle says. “What’s she going to do?”

“I don’t know,” Stan says. He gets up. “Something!”

“Stan, are you insane?”

Kyle jumps off the couch and pounces on him, as if Stan has already got his phone out and Kyle needs to wrestle it from his grip. They fight like old times, rolling around on the floor, tugging on the fronts of each other’s shirts. For a minute they’re both laughing, but Kyle shouts when his collar rips.

“Dumb ass!” he says, pushing away from Stan, who lies on his back on the floor, panting. “Look what — oh, God, this shirt cost like eighty bucks!”

“Why are you spending that much on clothes?” Stan asks. It’s unlike him.

“Because I can do what I want!” Kyle says. He fakes like he’s going to kick Stan in the ribs, then just presses his socked foot there gently. “Right?”

“I need to meet this guy,” Stan says, still breathless.

“Obviously,” Kyle says, and he smiles, which is weird.

“How’d you meet him?” Stan asks.

“Um.” Kyle stops fussing with his collar and runs his fingers through his hair, which was fantastically disordered during their fight. “Well. It was a dating site for gay Jews, actually.”

“So he’s Jewish?” Stan is suddenly jealous of this more than anything.

“No,” Kyle says. “He’s just interested in the faith, thinking of converting.”

“So he’s a liar with a Jew fetish.”

“Stan!”

They fight a little more, tamely, and Kyle asks Stan to drop the DVD in the mail for him. Stan goes home and jerks off in bed, thinking about rolling around on the floor with Kyle. He actually sort of meant to rip that collar. He wanted to rip the whole shirt off.

*

“Are you still a virgin?” Stan asks when they’re seated at an outdoor table at Black Crown Lounge, waiting for Danny to show up. Kyle picks up his fork and holds it in his fist.

“I’ll kill you if you embarrass me,” he says.

“With that fork?”

“Stan, I’m serious. This is — he makes me feel like a grown-up. Do you know what that’s like?”

Stan thinks about it. “Yes,” he says. He’s pretty sure he’s been feeling like a grown-up since he was ten. “But, what, you’re just not going to tell me?”

“Not going to tell you what?” Kyle’s eyes are darting around the patio area.

“About. I mean, I told you about my first time.”

“Really? Now is when you’re bringing this up? Really.”

“I just hadn’t thought of it until now,” Stan says, lying. It’s more like the need to know has been building and this, now, really, is the breaking point. “I just want to make sure he’s not using you,” Stan says, leaning over the table, whispering. Kyle ignores him, waving to someone.

“Dan!” he calls.

“I thought it was Danny,” Stan says. He turns and sees the man Kyle is waving to, kind of shocked to find that he’s small and skinny, not the mammoth lumberjack mid-life monster Stan had feared.

“Hey,” Danny says when he arrives at the table. His voice is creamy and adult-sounding, and Stan’s sense of having the upper hand as the tallest man at the table diminishes. Danny takes Kyle’s outstretched hands and kisses his cheek. “Sorry,” he says. “I had trouble with parking.”

“Dan, this is — well, Stan,” Kyle says, frowning when he hears the rhyme. “My oldest, best friend.”

“It’s great to finally meet you,” Danny says, and he puts his hand out.

“‘Allo,” Stan says, and for some reason it comes out in a kind of French-Australian hybrid accent that palpably mortifies everyone. Danny shakes his hand, giving him a confused grin. He’s handsome, tan, with floppy brown hair that curls a little at the ends. He’s wearing a douchey linen shirt with the first three buttons undone.

“Kyle talks about you all the time,” Danny says as they all sit. “You guys had quite a childhood together, huh?”

“It was a fairly average childhood,” Stan says, though it wasn’t.

“Stan is studying philosophy,” Kyle says. He looks panicked already, taking little sips from his sweating glass of water. “He’s thinking about going into law after undergrad.”

“Environmental Law,” Stan says, though he’s pretty much ruled that out. There’s not much money in it and he’d end up with something like a hundred thousand dollars in debt by the time he was through.

“That’s awesome,” Danny says. “My dad’s a lawyer.”

“So is Kyle’s,” Stan says. Kyle snorts into his water glass.

“Yeah, he knows,” Kyle says.

“But you’re not Jewish?” Stan says to Danny, who widens his eyes a little. “I mean — not really.”

“I’m thinking about converting,” Danny says. “I have some Jewish ancestry.”

“Well,” Stan says. “Who doesn’t, am I right?”

“Stan.” Kyle gives him a long look of warning. “You don’t.”

“How do you know?” Stan asks. “I think I might.”

“Anyway,” Kyle says. He turns to Danny. “How did the meeting go?”

“Oh, okay.” Danny shrugs. “Carl was domineering as usual.”

“Who’s Carl?” Stan asks.

“This guy I work with,” Danny says. “He’s Scottish.”

“Oh.” Stan plays with his straw wrapper.

The meal goes fine, and Stan spends much of it zoning out, staring at Kyle and wishing for a drink. He’s got some whiskey at home. Danny is not a jerk as he had hoped. He’s nice, smiley, and he keeps his arm draped casually around the back of Kyle’s chair throughout most of the meal. He doesn’t even look old.

“Well, he doesn’t drink or smoke,” Kyle says when Stan mentions this later. They’re on their way back to campus. Kyle is driving, and Stan is feeling so chewed up that he wants to beg Kyle to come back to the dorms and just sit with him until his desire to finish half that whiskey bottle has passed.

“What if I was gay?” Stan says when they’re outside of his dorm, Kyle waiting for him to exit the car. Kyle rests his hands on top of the steering wheel and stares at Stan.

“What do you mean?” Kyle asks.

“I mean — if I was gay, would you date me?”

“Oh, Jesus,” Kyle says. “Really? You won’t even live with me as a roommate.”

“I — what? No! You never asked me to live with you. What?”

“I talked about looking for roommates, Stan! You didn’t volunteer!”

“You talked about it like it was this exclusive thing that I wasn’t a part of! God, and that really hurt my feelings!”

“Okay, no.” Kyle pinches the bridge of his nose, something he stole from Stan, like his gayness. “What did you even think of Danny? Other than the fact that he doesn’t look ‘that old.’ As if I’d date someone who did.”

“Why do you call him Danny to me and Dan to his face?” Stan asks.

“I don’t know,” Kyle says. “It just comes out that way sometimes. Why did you say all that shit about Judaism? You don’t have any Jewish ancestors, Stan, okay? Your mother’s maiden name is Kern.”

Stan is speechless for a moment, touched by the fact that Kyle knows his mother’s maiden name.

“I just think it’s disingenuous that he went on a Jewish dating site without actually, you know, becoming a Jew first,” Stan says.

“He said in his profile that he wanted to reconnect with his Jewish roots!” Kyle says. “By making friends with other gay Jews. It was a friend thing at first. God!”

“Oh, bullshit. He saw a nineteen-year-old with a nice ass and jumped on that shit.”

“We haven’t even—” Kyle’s eyes narrow. “You think my ass is nice?”

“Well, duh,” Stan says.

“Stan, wait,” Kyle says when he goes for the passenger side door handle. “Wait.”

Someone behind them in the drop off lane is honking. Kyle groans and pulls forward, around the circle out in front of Stan’s dorm, then back down the road away from it.

“Were you about to say that you haven’t even fucked that guy?” Stan asks. “Because I don’t think you should. He’s all experienced, probably. You should be with someone inexperienced.”

“That makes no sense,” Kyle says, mumbling.

“Yes, it does! Who wants to go through that for the first time with someone who’s all — jaded?”

“Oh, you mean someone like you?” Kyle glares at him. “What are you up to now, twenty? And you don’t even call them!”

“I meant with men,” Stan says, though he’s not sure what he meant or what he’s trying to say. Kyle had looked so good under that guy’s arm at the restaurant. All grown up.

“You’re acting all possessive,” Kyle says. He shifts in his seat. “Of me.”

“Well, maybe I was going to say I was gay first, but you just jumped in and were like, ‘hey, here’s my eighty-year-old life partner, we talk about his business meetings and he buys me designer shirts.’”

“Stupid,” Kyle says, laughing. “You’re not gay, Stan.”

“Wow, Kyle. Wow.”

“Wow? What does that even mean? You’re just feeling left out!” Kyle reaches over to pat Stan’s knee. “It’s no different from when we were kids and suddenly you wanted Wendy just because I had her. As an egg partner, I mean.”

“Don’t pat me!” Stan says, slapping Kyle’s hand away. “And it’s not like that at all. Unless you’re Wendy in this scenario.”

“Well, I am, aren’t I?” Kyle asks. “Since you’re acting like a jealous lunatic.”

“I’m acting like a good friend, and that’s not the point! You can’t tell me I’m not gay. I am!”

“Oh, right.” Kyle rolls his eyes. “Okay, so you’ve been fucking guys all this time, too? Twenty more tally marks on your bedpost?”

“I’ve never — and I haven’t fucked twenty women. God! You have zero respect for me. Why are we even friends?”

“Stan.” Kyle sighs and pulls into the parking lot of the student medical center. He puts the car in park and reaches over to touch Stan’s leg, less condescendingly this time. “We’re not growing apart, if that’s what you’re worried about. Just because I’m gay — we’ll still be close.”

“You really like this guy?” Stan’s voice is starting to waver. Kyle frowns.

“Danny?” he says. “Well, yeah. He’s nice to me. He makes me feel cute and fun. Not many people do that.”

“I do that,” Stan says. He puts his hands over his face, though he’s not actually crying.

“Oh, hey,” Kyle says, his voice getting low and sympathetic. He unbuckles his seatbelt and moves over to rub Stan’s shoulders. “I know — or, no, I mean, you don’t make me feel cute and fun. But you make me feel special. Like the best possible version of my real self.”

“Kyle,” Stan says, lifting his face. He tries to make his expression deadly serious. “I think about your ass. A lot. Ever since you started to get too big for your old Terrence and Philip pajamas.”

“What?” Kyle frowns and pulls away a little. “Stan—”

“No, listen. What were we — twelve? You were still trying to wear those pajamas. You were always such a baby, Kyle, God, you would hold onto things even after Cartman got sick of them. They were too small, but I guess nobody wanted to tell you that. That was your baby fat phase. Those pajamas — when you walked upstairs in front of me they’d go right up your crack.”

“You sound crazy right now!” Kyle says, shouting. “Are you high? You were acting like a nut case at dinner, too — what was with that fucking accent? What even was that?”

“Why aren’t you hearing anything I say?” Stan asks. “Why do you see me as this big, inebriated joke?”

“Because you’re talking about my ass crack when I was twelve!”

“As an example of how gay I am, you dick!”

“You’re such an infant!” Kyle says. He turns away from Stan and pulls at his hair with both hands. “God! You would try to ruin this for me – perfect, yeah, of course. I finally have this one little thing, and you swoop in with your ass crack anecdotes—”

“I thought it was just an ass crack thing,” Stan says, feeling pretty insane, but also good, like the best possible version of his real self, because Kyle is mostly listening to him now. “But I think it’s a you thing. Or you’re very closely related, anyway. I think. Kyle, that Danny guy – no, look. I want to start going to synagogue with you.”

“Oh my God!” Kyle is laughing a little now, but he’s not looking at Stan, so Stan can’t tell if it’s hateful or conciliatory.

“I do have Jewish roots, dude!” Stan says, tugging on Kyle’s elbow until he turns to him. Kyle looks very tired, and Stan feels guilty. “You’re my roots,” Stan says. “I don’t mean to cheapen your religion, but you’re what I come from. You’re my whole history.”

“That’s not a reason to convert,” Kyle says. “To Judaism or homosexuality.”

“Kiss me for a second,” Stan says, pulling him closer. “And then tell me I’m wrong.”

“Stan,” Kyle says, scolding him, but he opens his lips against Stan’s when they press together. Kyle’s hand is shaking when he touches Stan’s neck, holding him in place while their tongues slide together, slow and deliberate but not exactly scientific. Stan moans into Kyle’s mouth, wanting to warm him up or calm him down, whatever he needs, though the shaking is kind of nice against his skin.

“See?” Stan says when they’ve been at it for a few minutes, rubbing their faces together between kisses.

“No,” Kyle says, deadpan. He grins when Stan whines and shakes his head in disbelief. “You don’t taste Jewish to me,” Kyle says, and he licks Stan’s lips like there’s some frosting there that he missed.

“You were jealous of the people I fucked,” Stan says. “Admit it.”

“Don’t look me in the eye and tell me I want your dick,” Kyle says, glowering. “Don’t do that.”

“That’s not what I meant!” Stan says, and Kyle laughs at his obvious distress.

“Well, God,” he says, shoving Stan back into the passenger seat. “We’d better go back to my apartment and have sex. Just to make sure you like it.”

Stan likes it. He likes the way Kyle shivers and tries to act like he knows what he’s doing, and the way he claws at Stan’s shoulders like he wants to climb inside him, too. He likes the way Kyle’s sweat tastes, and he feels like he knew that he would. He likes the feeling that Kyle might belong to him, and it feels best – that hope that it could be true – when Kyle curls against him afterward, out of breath and unguarded, his hair all messed up from the many times that Stan’s fingers combed through it.

“I should call Danny,” Kyle says. “You know, to tell him it’s over. This is dishonest.”

“Give it a few seconds,” Stan says. “You don’t want him to hear you when you’re all sexed up from some other guy.”

“All sexed up?” Kyle grins and presses his face to Stan’s, closing his eyes. “Yeah, that’s how I feel, that’s accurate.” He laughs at himself and opens his eyes. “Please don’t grow out of this,” he says.

“Being gay?” Stan says.

“No – me.” Kyle kisses him, pretending to be distracted by his mouth.

“Dude,” Stan says. “It’s been almost twenty years. I’m not—”

“But I feel like you grow out of me in stages,” Kyle says, peeking at him. “A little at a time, always keeping me around but never quite the same—”

“Well, I’m older than you,” Stan says. “Give me a break. I always let you catch up.”

“Barely six months older,” Kyle says. He pushes his leg up between Stan’s, and it’s enough to make Stan think about going again, but Kyle will be sore, so they should probably just rest, watch a Netflix DVD, order some food.

“Still,” Stan says. “You’re my, uh. What do you call them? Twink.”

“You’ve been watching gay porn,” Kyle says, shaking his head. “There’s no other avenue by which you would have learned the word twink.”

“Fair enough,” Stan says. “But I don’t like the twinks. They’re depressing. The whole thing is, those videos – oh, man, Kyle.” He squeezes Kyle closer, breathing him in. “It’s like this is the first time I’ve had real sex.”

“It’s like that for me, too,” Kyle says, softly, and that’s when Stan is sure that it was Kyle’s first time period. He pets Kyle with extra care, kisses him, and lets him pick the manner of delivery food they’ll have for dinner. Kyle wants Thai, tom yum with tofu and green curry with chicken. They kiss when their tongues are on fire from the curry, lips burning, and Stan doesn’t feel particularly grown up, but he feels the way he only ever has with Kyle, like they’re both their best possible selves because they’re together.


	4. I'm Competitive With My Best Friend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kyle bets Stan that he can abstain from sex longer than he can.

Kyle has a habit of watching bad TV and eating junk food after sex, and Stan has always been happy to indulge him in this. Early one Tuesday evening they’re watching some reality program on Bravo and eating tortilla chips with salsa, which Stan fetched from the kitchen after some brief post-sex cuddling. Crumbs and salsa drips are getting on the blanket they’re huddled under, but Stan doesn’t care. It’s raining outside, the daylight still fading behind the clouds, and he’s curled around Kyle, warm and cozy enough not to mind the screeching of the characters on the show.

“We haven’t had sex in three weeks!” one of them says to her boyfriend, enraged.

“What’s the longest we’ve gone without?” Kyle asks. He always tries to turn these shows into some sort of dialogue.

“The first twenty years?” Stan says.

“That doesn’t count,” Kyle says. He sits up and surveys the blanket. “Oh my God,” he says. “Shit.”

“It’s fine,” Stan says. “It’ll come out in the wash.”

“Well, if we had something to eat other than tortilla chips,” Kyle says, and Stan thinks he’s probably blushing, but he can’t tell by the light of the television. “I mean, I’m not going to eat them without salsa, you know? That’s pointless.”

“Totally,” Stan says, digging another one into the plastic tub of salsa.

“Anyway,” Kyle says. He’s brushing crumbs everywhere, and Stan wants to protest, because if they at least keep them on the blanket he can take it to the back porch and shake them out into the rain, but he says nothing, because Kyle seems like he’s gearing up to make a speech of some kind. “I think the longest we’ve gone is maybe three days. I wonder if that’s average for people our age?”

“I don’t know,” Stan says, not really interested in what’s average and having a hard time recalling any three day stretches without sex. They’re both thirty-two, and ever since they got together in college they’ve been inseparable and physically needy in a corresponding way that has been one of the great joys of Stan’s life.

“Which of us do you think has the bigger sex drive?” Kyle asks. He leans back and studies Stan, awaiting his response.

“I think it’s the same for both of us,” Stan says. “You know? That’s why we’re compatible.”

“Yeah, but if you had to pick,” Kyle says. He always does this when Stan tries to duck out of a question. “Who do you think could, like, hold out longer?”

“You?” Stan says, hoping that’s the answer Kyle wants. “I mean, just because I wouldn’t want to. Hold out.” He presses against Kyle’s side to emphasize his point. Kyle grins and wipes some salt from the corner of Stan’s lips.

“But if you had to,” Kyle says. “How long do you think you could go?”

“I don’t know,” Stan says. “It depresses me to think about it.”

“You need sex that much? I’m not talking about being away from each other, dude, I just mean — anal, oral, mutual jerk off, docking, that sort of thing.”

“So we could still kiss?” Stan says.

“Well, maybe not kissing,” Kyle says. Stan doesn’t like the fact that rules seem to be forming, even if they’re only theoretical. “But cuddling. We would still be together, hanging out and touching and stuff. Just not in a sexual way.”

“Every time I touch you, it’s sexual,” Stan says, and Kyle laughs. Stan can see he’s very flattered by the progression of his conversation. It’s annoying him a little. “That’s not true for you?” Stan says, withholding a skeptical snort. Kyle constantly turns the most incidental touches into suggestive caresses that make Stan hard, sometimes in public.

“No,” Kyle says. “I mean, when I hold your hand while we’re going for a walk or something, that’s not sexual.”

“Um, yes it is. In the sense that you wouldn’t hold hands that way with Ike. Or Kenny.”

“Kenny!” Kyle says, and perhaps it is a weird example, because Kenny lives in Raleigh and they haven’t seen him in a few years.

“I meant a friend,” Stan says. Kyle doesn’t have many that don’t stretch all the way back to the South Park days. He has acquaintances at work, but for the most part he tags along with Stan and his friends, which, actually, was how things operated when they were kids, too.

“How much do you want to bet,” Kyle says, and Stan was afraid this was coming, “That I can’t hold out longer than you?”

“Well, obviously I can hold out however as long as you can.”

“Oh, really?” Kyle gives him a disbelieving look.

“I mean because I need your consent, Kyle! If you’re going to randomly hold out on me for the sake of some bet. I’m pretty much at your mercy, okay, congratulations.”

“No, don’t be like that,” Kyle says, leaning onto his chest, half-mounting him. They’re both still naked under the blankets, and Kyle reeks of sex and corn chips. “Why do you have to be so sensitive?” Kyle asks. “It’s a game. A fun game! Because think of how great the sex will be after the hiatus!”

Stan thinks it’s already great. He huffs and looks at the window. The rain sliding down over the window seems gloomier than it did a few minutes ago.

“That still doesn’t work,” Stan says. “If you can hold out, I have to hold out.”

“You could just say uncle or something,” Kyle says. “Whenever you can’t take it anymore you forfeit the game, and then you can have me. Simple!”

“Fine, but this isn’t something we’re actually, like, doing.”

“Why not?” Kyle sits up, straddling Stan’s hips and further scattering crumbs. “I want to try it. I like to test my willpower. And I’m curious to see how long you would last.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t think you could last that long.” Kyle smiles impishly, trying to be cute. Stan is not charmed.

“Okay,” he says. “Okay, fine. What’s the wager?”

“The wager?”

“What does the winner get?”

Kyle has to think about this, apparently. His bare ass is snug over Stan’s dick, and Stan shifts away, not wanting to get hard. He actually wants to win this, to prove something. Kyle is so smug when he gets competitive, so sure that he’s better at everything, or at least more disciplined, a harder worker. He makes more money than Stan does, planning weddings. Stan is a videographer, and he’s increasingly tired of editing people’s wedding videos. He’d wanted to be a journalist, to travel around the world with his camera and some reporter who was interested in being on the front lines.

“The winner gets to pick where we go for vacation this summer,” Kyle says. “How’s that?”

“Okay.” Stan has been wanting to do a road trip of national park visits, and Kyle vetoes this every time he tries to seriously suggest it. Last summer they went to Bali for vacation and barely left the Four Seasons. It was enjoyable, but Stan would like to do something adventurous for once. “I’m going to hold you to that when I win,” he says.

“Right,” Kyle says, sliding off of him. “Well, if I win we’re going to Disney.”

“Kyle. Again?”

“I’m just saying, if I win! That’s what I’ll pick. And you don’t even have to tell me yours. Camping, hiking, eat beans out of a can. Right?”

“Right,” Stan says.

“Then it’s a deal,” Kyle says, putting out his hand. “Whoever says ‘uncle’ first forfeits, and the winner picks our vacation.”

“Sounds fair,” Stan says. They shake on it, and Stan gets out of bed to have a shower.

“Leave that,” Kyle says when Stan reaches for the tub of salsa.

“Wait,” Stan says, and he stretches, showing off, watching Kyle’s eyes trail down his body. “Can we jerk off?”

“Well, of course,” Kyle says. “Right? That doesn’t count. We just can’t watch each other do it.”

“Good,” Stan says. He adjusts his dick and heads for the bathroom.

“You already need to beat off?” Kyle says. “We just fucked!”

“I didn’t say I was going to beat off,” Stan says, but when he’s in the shower he does, thinking about Kyle crying and dropping to his knees to rub his face against Stan’s crotch, saying uncle, uncle, uncle.

*

DAY ONE

Stan has a lot of work to do and ends up staying down in the basement editing videos until dinnertime. When he comes up Kyle is working on some kind of cream sauce, stirring in frozen peas.

“That smells good,” Stan says. He comes up behind Kyle at the stove and fits himself against Kyle’s back, holding his hips, making sure the bulge of his dick bumps Kyle’s ass.

“Oh, God,” Kyle says, snorting. “What, you’re trying to tempt me? It hasn’t even been a day! You think I’m that weak?”

“I’m not doing anything,” Stan says, leaning in so that his lips brush Kyle’s neck.

“Stop,” Kyle says, swatting at him. “Get the chicken out and pound it.”

“Pound it?”

“You’re not funny, Stan! You know what I mean.”

He does, and puts the chicken breasts between two sheets of cellophane wrap before pounding them with the bottom of the olive oil bottle, which they use in place of a mallet. When they’re about an inch thick he passes them to Kyle.

“Did you take a jerk off break down in the basement?” Kyle asks while Stan watches him cook, hugging him from behind.

“No,” Stan says.

“Well, I took a break. Between appointments. In our bedroom.”

“That’s nice for you.”

“Yes, it was nice. I don’t normally jerk off, you know? That’s more your thing.”

“What did you think about?” Stan asks, rubbing Kyle’s hips.

“I don’t think you can rub me,” Kyle says. “Or ask me about my sexual fantasies. Unless you want to say uncle?”

“Please,” Stan says. “You think I’m that weak?”

“If you did, you could have me right here,” Kyle says, and he wiggles his ass back against Stan’s cock, which is getting a little hard, mostly for the thought of Kyle waving one of his brides out and going to their bed to touch himself before his next one arrived.

“Nope,” Stan says, moving away from him. “I’m getting a beer, you want one?”

“No, thank you.” Kyle smirks at Stan from over his shoulder as he goes to the fridge. “I felt that, you know. Your dick.”

“Yeah,” Stan says. He closes the fridge without getting a beer. “I guess I should go take care of it.”

“Wash your hands after,” Kyle says as Stan heads for the bedroom.

DAY TWO

Stan has to meet with a potential client at lunch. She’s also Kyle’s client, and he recommended Stan as her videographer. Some of them just take Kyle’s word for it and sign up to use him right away, and others, like this girl, feel they must investigate.

“I just think it’s the sweetest thing,” the girl says. She seems too young to get married. “You and Kyle, doing weddings together.”

“Thanks,” Stan says. He’s heard this before, lots of times. He and Kyle haven’t bothered to get married themselves, since it wouldn’t be recognized in Colorado. Stan wants to move out of state, but their client base is here.

“And Kyle is the best,” the girl says. “My friend told me I had to have him.”

Stan thinks about that on the drive home, the fact that there are other people in the world who feel like they have to have Kyle. There were a few romantic rivals in college, and in high school there was Cartman, who might not have wanted to fuck Kyle but definitely wanted some sort of ownership of him.

“Do you ever hear from Eric Cartman?” Stan asks when they’re eating leftovers in front of the TV. Kyle gives him a look, rearing backward.

“Fuck no,” he says. “Why would I?”

“Well – you’re Facebook friends, aren’t you?”

“Stan. I’m Facebook friends with your dad, too. It doesn’t mean we actually talk. Why the hell are you asking me this, anyway?”

“No reason,” Stan says. “Just, in high school. Do you think Cartman wanted to fuck you?”

“Well, yeah,” Kyle says, forking pasta.

“What? Why – why do you think that? How come you never told me?”

“I thought I had?” Kyle frowns. “Oh, maybe not. Me and you were fighting or something. Right before college, he came onto me. He was super drunk, took his dick out and everything.”

“Fuck!” Stan wants to drive to Nevada, pull Cartman out of the casino where he works security and beat him to a pulp on the pavement. “Are you serious? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It was something to do with not wanting you to know I was gay,” Kyle says, shrugging. He looks at Stan. “What – are you upset?”

“Uh, yeah, Kyle, I’m fucking upset! That pervert exposed himself to you?”

“It’s not like I hadn’t seen Cartman’s dick before,” Kyle says.

“What?”

“I mean when we were kids! Like that day when he walked naked across the auction stage at the fair. Cartman was like a big, stupid brother to me. This pain in the ass who was always around, you know, I just couldn’t get rid of him. Then that happened, and I rejected him, and he moved to Los Angeles to go to that bullshit martial arts school or whatever the fuck. Stan, for God’s sake! Calm down.”

“I’m calm,” Stan says, though he’s not. “Is there anything else I don’t know about kids we grew up with and sexual advances they made on you?”

“You weren’t my boyfriend back then,” Kyle says, smiling. “You can’t feel betrayed or anything.”

“Kyle!”

“Well – okay. Clyde Donovan took me to a glory hole at Shakey’s Pizza and watched me suck some random guy’s dick through it. But I’m pretty sure the guy was Craig, um – oh, fuck, what was Craig’s last name?”

Stan gets up and takes his plate to the kitchen, his appetite gone. Kyle sighs.

“Gee, I’m sure glad I told you about this,” he says. “I can’t imagine why I ever kept it from you, since I knew you’d react so rationally.”

“I’m not mad,” Stan says. “I’m upset. It’s different.”

“If I had known that your dick was available for sucking I wouldn’t have bothered with Clyde’s glory hole, okay? Obviously.”

“Why were you so desperate to suck dick, anyway?” Stan asks, and he knows he’s being mean but he can’t take that back, even when the amusement on Kyle’s face drops away and he just looks crushed. “I mean, it’s not even that great. It’s like a favor that you do for someone.”

“When I suck your dick you see that as me doing you a favor?” Kyle says, his voice flat.

“No,” Stan says. “Because we’re in love. Then it’s different. Like when I eat your ass – I wouldn’t eat anyone else’s ass, Kyle, ever. I wouldn’t like it.”

“You’re so fucked up about sex,” Kyle says, narrowing his eyes. “You know, that’s half the reason I wanted to do this bet. I knew it would bring out some weird shit in you.”

“Thank goodness I have you around to bring out my weird shit,” Stan says, and he leaves the room before Kyle can respond, heading for the bedroom. He brushes his teeth, suddenly unable to stand the garlicky taste of Kyle’s cream sauce. Still feeling angry that Kyle never confided in him about Cartman or that nasty business with Clyde, he undresses completely before getting in bed and lies naked on top of the blankets, turned away from the door.

Kyle comes in ten minutes later and putters around the room, sighing as if he’s very put-upon indeed. When he gets into bed Stan peeks over his shoulder to see if Kyle is naked, too. He’s still wearing his t-shirt and boxers, lying on his back.

“I’m sorry,” Stan says. “I didn’t mean to be – weird. I’m glad you like sucking dick.”

“Shut the fuck up, Stan,” Kyle says, softly, and he closes his eyes. Stan rolls over to nuzzle at him apologetically and considers saying uncle just to end the fight. “Why are you nude?” Kyle asks, his lip curling.

“I like sleeping naked,” Stan says. “You know that.”

“Yes, but – ugh.” Kyle rolls over, away from him. He doesn’t object when Stan nakedly spoons him.

*

DAY THREE

They go to the grocery store together after Kyle’s last appointment of the day. They’ve got a wedding coming up on Saturday, a big one with lots of outdoor element factors. Kyle is forever checking his phone for weather forecasts on behalf of his brides.

“So?” Stan says as they’re pushing the cart past the deli. “What do you want for dinner?”

“Fish,” Kyle says.

“Okay,” Stan says. “Like, grilled tuna steaks or crabcakes, or —?”

“I’ll see what they have over there,” Kyle says.

“What else should we get?” Stan asks. He hates it when they go to the store without a list. “Dinners-wise?”

“I don’t know,” Kyle says. “You pick.”

“Steaks?”

“No, ew. I’m not really into red meat right now.”

“Right,” Stan says, thinking of their sex hiatus. “Chicken?”

Kyle makes a face. “I’m so sick of chicken.”

“Uh – pork?”

“It’s fattening. And don’t even mention pasta. I’ve got to stop eating pasta.”

“So, what? Stuffed peppers?”

“Don’t those have ground beef in them?”

“They don’t have to.”

“Whatever, fine.”

Stan is impatient at the fish counter, craning his neck to see if anyone is on their way to help them. Kyle is distracted by his phone, typing texts to vendors.

“This bitch would not hear me about the doves,” Kyle says, shaking his head. “Who still does a dove release at a wedding? I should have fired her for insisting on this, but she’s paying me a lot. So now I’m dealing with a fucking backwoods dove wrangler.”

“Don’t refer to your clients as bitches in public,” Stan says.

“Some of them are bitches, Stan, and you know it. You haven’t really had to deal with this lady, lucky you. I’m sure she’ll complain about the video after she sees it. You know, because we can’t make her look younger or less jiggly-armed.”

“Why are you even in this business?” Stan asks. The fish monger still hasn’t come.

“Are you trying to pick a fight with me?” Kyle pokes him in the ribs. “You know I like planning things, and it’s easy money. And I like – I mean, I like weddings.”

Kyle has all of the wedding reality shows on their DVR, and he watches them on Sundays when Stan drives to South Park to visit his parents. Kyle sees his parents on Jewish holidays. They don’t approve of his lifestyle: the career centered on the petty demands of privileged women, the lack of religious conviction, Stan. They’re not against homosexuality, just against what they see as the smallness of Kyle’s life and Stan’s contribution to it.

“I used to like weddings,” Stan says.

“You’re so grouchy when we’re not fucking,” Kyle says, and the fish monger appears. Kyle asks for scallops that end up costing twenty-three dollars.

In bed that night, Stan feels like he reeks of shellfish. He reaches over to tickle the back of Kyle’s neck with his fingertips.

“Is this allowed?” he whispers. Kyle does a soft moan thing that he’s got to be employing for sabotage purposes, flexing into Stan’s touch.

“Feels good,” he says.

“I’d die if I couldn’t touch you,” Stan says, and Kyle rolls over to look at him. For a second Stan is sure that Kyle is going to say ‘uncle.’

“Shit,” Kyle says.

“What?”

“I forgot to do a test run on that woman’s playlist. Remind me tomorrow, okay?”

“Okay. Come here.”

Kyle scoots into Stan’s arms and they fall asleep that way, partial boners resting against each other’s thighs. Stan doesn’t really want sex; he’s too tired. He presses his face into Kyle’s hair and kisses the top of his head. He never would have agreed to a contest that didn’t allow for this.

*

DAY FOUR

The work day drags, so Stan checks the basement stairs, and when he sees no sign of Kyle descending into his editing lair he opens up Facebook and logs in as Kyle, password broncos1019. It’s their shared password for everything, only Stan uses Kyle’s birthdate in place of the 1019 on his accounts.

Stan opens up Clyde Donovan’s page first. He still lives in South Park, where he performs plastic surgery at what is now Clyde’s Rhinoplasty. Stan wouldn’t let Clyde Donovan come near him with a band-aid and has serious doubts about how he managed to make it through med school, but Bebe claimed that Clyde did a great job on her ass, to which Kyle said, later, ‘I’ll bet.’ Clyde and Bebe are both married, but the rumors that they’re having an affair don’t seem very far-fetched. Clyde’s wall is full of messages from Bebe, most of them featuring flirtatious smileys. Stan always thought Clyde was completely straight and wants to interview Kyle further about why Clyde ended up standing there watching Kyle suck a dick. Stan wonders if there are pictures that circulated among Craig’s gang. Angrily, he clicks on Craig’s page.

Craig is out and living in New Orleans, dating some chef who is apparently famous, though Stan has never heard of him. Kyle claims that Craig is a coke dealer, but Stan doesn’t see how Kyle could know that. Craig looks good in his pictures, and Stan hates him intensely for the thought that Kyle’s sweet lips once opened for Craig’s arrogant cockhead.

Finally, he looks at Cartman’s page. Cartman is still fat but also big, and he thinks it’s a big deal that he’s a casino thug. He claims to know mobsters, but no one believes him, though Stan wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Cartman is a hitman. In Cartman’s pictures he’s with all sorts of beautiful women. Prostitutes, Stan thinks, closing the web browser. He just doesn’t take pictures when he fucks the male variety. Or maybe he does, and just doesn’t post them on Facebook.

Thinking this, Stan opens up his file of Kyle videos. When Kyle was younger and more fit he used to let Stan film him all the time. Sex stuff, mostly, but Stan attempted some artier videos. They’re supposed to show how beautiful Kyle looks through Stan’s gaze, but he could never accurately capture that. He opens one of his favorites, of twenty-five-year-old Kyle fucking himself with a big purple vibrator. Kyle looks drugged with pleasure, rubbing his nipples when Stan tells him to. The sound of his own voice from behind the camera, deep and vaguely menacing, gets him going, and he opens his jeans.

“Cheater!” Kyle says, his voice suddenly blasting from the stairwell. Stan turns from the video without pausing it, letting Kyle watch him stroke his dick. Kyle groans and covers his eyes. The Kyle on the video is whimpering with pleasure, saying Stan, Stan. He’s begging for Stan to come over and replace the vibrator with his cock. “You are cheating!” Kyle says from the stairs, his eyes still covered.

“I didn’t know this was against the rules,” Stan says. He’s stroking himself, waiting for Kyle to peek. “Anyway, it’s definitely against the rules for you to watch me jerk off, so you should go.”

“Close that video! That’s me! You’re getting off on me, that’s not fair!”

“Like you haven’t fantasized about me since we started this,” Stan says. He closes the video, worried that Kyle hasn’t actually fantasized about him since they got together. Maybe he still thinks about that glory hole.

“You’re a dirty cheater!” Kyle says, and he stomps up the stairs.

Stan comes up for dinner five minutes later after a not-spectacular orgasm. He reaches for a piece of the garlic bread Kyle is slicing at the counter and Kyle slaps his hand away.

“Wash up,” he says.

“You eat my come all the time,” Stan says.

“Not right now I don’t,” Kyle says, and he lifts his chin. “I am playing by the rules.”

*

DAY FIVE

The wedding is at sunset, but Stan and Kyle are there at noon. It’s a big one with 500 guests, and Stan has two guys helping him with the footage. The guys meet them at the venue and Stan knows he’s going to hear it from Kyle about what they’re wearing. Stan and Kyle are both in suits.

“Not only is it disrespectful to our clients, it’s disrespectful to you,” Kyle says, whispering this as Stan helps him arrange the favors on a table outside of the reception area.

“They’re just sneakers,” Stan says. “And they’re black. At least Joey wore a polo this time. And those pants aren’t that bad. They’re not jeans.”

“I just don’t see why you can’t hire real professionals,” Kyle says. “Instead of these children.”

“It saves me money, Kyle. And their camera work isn’t bad.”

“Well. It’s not as good as yours.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say.”

Things have been tense at home and Stan is not in the mood for a particularly involved wedding. He has to film the bridal party getting ready, and there are girls crossing the room in bras, drinking champagne and posing as if they’re on one of Kyle’s reality shows. Kyle has signed waivers to have footage of himself with his brides on several shows over the years, but his scenes have yet to make the cut.

“It’s okay, he’s gay,” the bride says when one of her maids pulls up short and gapes at the camera. “The wedding planner is his boyfriend. That red haired guy.”

“I can turn it off,” Stan says, lowering the camera to his shoulder. “Until everyone is decent.”

“No, leave it,” the bride says. “This part’s important.”

At sunset, everything goes according to plan, even the dove release. Stan gets what he might later judge to be good shots; it’s hard for him to get excited about competently filming weddings. At one point it had seemed a little thrilling, spying on someone’s special occasion from behind the camera lens and watching Kyle flit around making all of his arrangements. Now Stan just feels servant-like and ignored.

“Look what I got,” Kyle says when they’re walking to their car after midnight. He reaches into the bag he used to tote the favors and shows Stan the necks of two champagne bottles.

“You’re so tacky,” Stan says, grinning, and he pulls Kyle to him for a kiss so that he won’t take that observation the wrong way. Stan really loves it when Kyle is tacky.

“No kissing,” Kyle says, but he just laughs and clings to the back of Stan’s jacket when Stan covers his face with dry kisses.

They complain about the bride and the guests on the way home. It’s always Stan’s favorite part of doing a job together.

“I hate it when they want me to film the getting-ready process,” Stan says. “I wish I could give that to Joey or Aaron.”

“Oh, right!” Kyle says. “So they could beat off to it later?”

“Well, right, that’s why I have to do it. I’m just saying.”

“So hire some twinky little gay boys,” Kyle says. He frowns at his reflection in the windshield. “Wait, no, don’t.”

“Old gay bears?” Stan says.

“I think they intimidate women as much as straight men, honestly. In terms of having them around when bras are exposed.”

“And you know what intimidates women?”

“Um, what?” Kyle gives him a look of disgust. “I know more about women than you do! Way more! You think I’ve learned nothing through working with all these brides?”

“Do you intimidate them?” Stan asks.

“I hope so,” Kyle says, and he wilts. “Probably not, though. I think I intimidate vendors. Especially caterers. Ultimately that’s more useful.”

“The food at this one was good,” Stan says.

“I’m just glad I talked her out of mashed potatoes in martini glasses,” Kyle says. “Can you imagine? That and doves?”

“I like mashed potato bars,” Stan says. “Are they not cool anymore?”

“They were never cool! But I think, yeah, decorum essentially forbids them now.”

Back at the house, they open the champagne and eat truffles from some of the leftover favors. They almost never have to find their own dinner on Saturday night, though some of the more stressful weddings don’t allow time to do anything more than sneak a few appetizers off catering trays and they’ll end up in the Taco Bell drive thru line at one o’clock in the morning. Tonight Stan did well finding opportunities to shovel in some food, and Kyle must have, too, because he’s content to drink champagne and sit in Stan’s lap on the couch, straddling him.

“This doesn’t count as a non-sexual touch,” Stan says when Kyle’s crotch comes to rest against his.

“You look so handsome in a suit,” Kyle says, tugging on Stan’s tie. “What would — what would you wear if you married me?”

“Whatever you wanted me to,” Stan says, as if Kyle doesn’t know this. Kyle laughs and touches his nose to Stan’s. It seems like maybe they’re calling off the game, and Stan is more than ready, but he really doesn’t want to go to Disney World again this year, so he freezes and moves back a little when Kyle’s lips open over his. “Is this — are we not playing anymore?” Stan asks.

“Playing — oh.” Kyle sits back and drinks more champagne. “Well, no. I mean, yes. We’re still playing. Unless you don’t want to.”

“Well - no, but—”

“So you say uncle?” Kyle says, leaning toward him again.

“No,” Stan says, slowly. It’s not that Disney is terrible, it’s just that they’ve been four times in ten years. It’s expensive, and Stan feels like a creepy idiot for not having children the whole time they’re there.

“Fine,” Kyle says. He dismounts, stumbling a little when his calves knock against the coffee table. “Me either.”

“Your dick, though,” Stan says sadly, eying the tented front of Kyle’s trousers. He’s on the verge of saying uncle just for the sake of Kyle’s cock.

“I can take care of that myself,” Kyle says, marching for the bedroom. Stan sits there feeling like he’s done something wrong, though this game was Kyle’s idea.

He finishes his bottle of champagne and puts the remains of Kyle’s into the fridge. Stan has a high tolerance and could easily go through another bottle of this light stuff without feeling very impaired, but Kyle has the opposite constitution and Stan almost never fucks him if they’ve been drinking, because alcohol is like kryptonite for Kyle’s cock, at least in terms of him actually being able to finish. That wasn’t true in college, when Kyle used to love getting sloppy drunk almost as much as Stan did if it meant they could have wildly uninhibited sex and pass out in a tangled heap. Now Stan isn’t surprised to find Kyle not luxuriating in a contented afterglow but curled up on his side under the blankets, clothed. There’s no whiff of masturbatory emissions in the air.

Stan flops down onto Kyle, intruding his personal space in every way possible, a leg slung across his hips and his mouth resting against the back of Kyle’s neck. He doesn’t want to do this anymore, is afraid it’s becoming about something other than sex, but that’s the reason he can’t say uncle. Kyle sighs and reaches back to touch Stan’s thigh. For a few weighty seconds Stan thinks this might be a good time to propose marriage or something equally dramatic, and his heart pounds until he’s sure that Kyle can feel it against his back.

“What if I wanted doves at our wedding?” Stan asks. “What if that was the one thing I insisted on?”

At first Stan just thinks Kyle is taking a long time to carefully ponder the question, then he realizes he’s pretending to be asleep.

*

DAY SIX

Sunday is their day for indulging themselves and each other. Kyle takes no appointments and Stan does no editing. Typically they have some lazy morning sex and Stan cooks a big breakfast while Kyle sits at the kitchen table reading him news stories. They usually do a little work in the backyard, and end up napping together in the hammock if the weather is nice. Then maybe a movie, sex on the couch, and a restaurant for dinner.

Not having the early morning sex throws everything off. Stan gropes for Kyle under the blankets, and Kyle only allows Stan to paw him aimlessly for a few seconds before he slides away, sighing. He brushes his teeth before breakfast, which is all wrong.

“What do you want me to cook?” Stan says, coming up behind him at the sink, still naked.

“What, for breakfast?” Kyle asks.

“No, for—” Stan is too tired to think of anything clever. “Of course for breakfast, yeah.”

“Whatever you want,” Kyle says. “If we even have anything.”

“We have stuff for waffles,” Stan says. Kyle turns from the sink and eyes Stan’s morning wood, which is so embarrassingly perpendicular that Stan wants to put his hands over himself.

“Are you pointing that at me?” Kyle asks.

“I just have to pee,” Stan says.

“You could use the hall bathroom.”

“I don’t like being naked in the hall.”

Kyle rolls his eyes and washes off his toothbrush. Stan has never before felt as if he was crowding Kyle. Growing up, he always felt like he was supplementing Kyle’s physical mass when they were close, like their edges blended together until they were a single more powerful organism. And this was even before they’d fucked.

They have strawberries in their garden, and though the plant is struggling Stan picks a few small ones to decorate the waffles. He listens more intently than usual to the news stories Kyle chooses to read from the paper and tries to offer useful commentary. He’s slightly distracted by Kyle’s little jersey shorts, his traditional Sunday morning attire. Stan reaches down to squeeze one of Kyle’s exposed thighs as he serves the waffles, and Kyle grins.

“You know what I like about this?” Kyle says.

“What?” Stan asks, assuming he’s referring to Stan’s hand kneading his inner thigh.

“When you touch me like that it seems kind of illicit,” Kyle says. “Like you’re sneaking it, like it’s not allowed.”

“Oh.” Stan loosens his grip. “You know — we could make a game like that. A different game.”

“So you want to give this one up?”

“Not yet,” Stan says, and he goes to get his own waffles.

After breakfast it’s raining, so there’s no yard work and no hammock. Kyle watches wedding shows and Stan complains that it almost counts as work. They watch pre-season football and slump against each other, half-awake. The rain stops and Stan feels like he should do something, but it’s still cloudy, which seems like reason enough to do nothing. Kyle is lying against his chest, constantly adjusting his cheek in an effort to get comfortable. Kyle’s is the better chest for lying against, because he’s softer there. Stan reaches down to lift Kyle’s shirt up and brush his fingers over the pale red hair around his belly button.

“What do you want for lunch?” Kyle asks, frowning down at his stomach.

“Your ass,” Stan says, and Kyle laughs, arching back to look at him.

“Is that uncle, then?”

“No,” Stan says. “I’m just stating for the record that if you say uncle right now I’ll eat your ass until you’re all sensitive and begging to be fucked—”

“Stan!”

“I know, okay, fine, I’ll stop.”

Kyle moans and rolls over to hide his face in the crook of Stan’s arm. For a moment Stan feels certain Kyle will say uncle, then he decides he’d better do it himself before this escalates any further, but the house phone rings before he can. Only two people aside from telemarketers ever call the house phone: Kyle’s mother and Stan’s mother.

“Just leave it,” Kyle says when Stan starts to get up. “It’ll be my mother bothering me about dinner on Wednesday.”

“Dinner?”

“Yes, I told you — Ike’s birthday. He’s in town with that girl.”

“His wife?”

“Yeah, her.”

Sheila leaves a message that blasts into their living room:

“Kyle, it’s Mom. I just wanted to make sure you two remember about Wednesday. Ike adores Stanley and I know he’d like to see him. And you, too, of course! Don’t bother with a gift, he doesn’t need anything. Just have Stanley bring that fruit tart like he made last time. Alright, bubbeh, call me!”

“Don’t bother with a gift,” Kyle says. He sits up, scowling. “Subtle reminder of Ike’s millions.”

“He doesn’t really have millions,” Stan says. Ike is a computer something or other. He lives in California.

“Well, he has hundreds of thousands that are surely approaching millions,” Kyle says. He gets up to stretch, moaning and lifting his arms over his head. “I think I want pizza,” he says.

“Do I really have to make that tart again?” Stan asks. That tart was hard. The crust alone took a couple of hours, all said.

“Just get one from Fleischman’s,” Kyle says, waving his hand. “She won’t know the difference.”

“I feel like she will.” Stan still wants Sheila to like him, or to like him a bit more, anyway. “No, I’ll make it. It’s fine.”

They go out for pizza at four and count it as their dinner. The sun comes out as they’re heading home, and Stan thinks of the last time they had sex, after an early dinner, well before their usual bedtime. Kyle had slid his hands into the back pockets of Stan’s jeans when he was at the sink, squeezed his ass, and that had been enough.

He realizes as they’re getting into bed that night that what he misses about sex isn’t even the sex itself, in terms of coming in Kyle’s ass or mouth or whatever. It’s the permission to fuse with Kyle that he feels like he’s lost, the feeling that they’re on the same team.

“I don’t want you to waste your whole afternoon making a tart for her if you don’t want to,” Kyle says while they’re cuddling, thunder starting up again in the distance.

“It’s not a waste,” Stan says.

“Sure it is. None of us needs the calories.”

“I’m doing it as an ambassador for our relationship,” Stan says. “It’s like, proof that we can get things done.”

“We?” Kyle says. “I’ve got back to back appointments that day.”

“I meant me on your behalf. Like. It’s a peace offering for your family. In exchange for me having taken you away.”

“Ha! You think they want me hanging around there? I’m thirty-two. What are you talking about?”

“I don’t know,” Stan says. “I’m tired.”

“If you want to say uncle you could fall asleep inside me,” Kyle says, leaning up to whisper this in Stan’s ear. “I know you like that. Holding me open after you’ve made me all wet.”

“That’s not what I like about it,” Stan says, annoyed by this.

“No?”

“No. I like — not having to leave you. I like that you let me stay.”

“Stan!” Kyle whacks his shoulder. “Just say uncle, okay? I would have already, but I really hate peeing in the woods.”

“It wouldn’t have to be that kind of road trip,” Stan says.

“Oh, whatever.” Kyle rolls away from him angrily. “Forget it. I don’t even want you to fuck me if you’re going to be like this.”

“So if I said uncle right now, we wouldn’t fuck?”

“No, but I would win.”

“That seems unfair,” Stan says. He turns away from Kyle, toward the window. Part of him feels like they’re just pretending to fight, and part of him feels the way he did from the ages of ten to fourteen, when he wasn’t very close to Kyle. He used to see Kyle from across the lunch room and want to stand up and scream, What the hell are you doing over there, even though Stan had been vaguely complicit in Kyle’s banishment to the dork table. Stan was the one who’d finally made the grand gesture during their first semester in high school, a sober breakdown on Kyle’s doorstep. Kyle hugged him, sniffled against his shoulder and said he’d missed him, too, and when Stan didn’t want to let go he figured out a few things about himself that didn’t get him anywhere for another six years. Coming back together for good took another grand gesture that led to sex on the couch in Kyle’s apartment, followed by Doritos and reality TV. They haven’t really been apart since.

DAY SEVEN

Kyle has a lunch appointment with a client, and Stan has his once-monthly lunch in the city with Wendy. They go to their usual place, a restaurant with homemade sweet potato chips that are served with ranch dipping sauce. Sometimes they get two orders.

“So how’s Kyle?” Wendy asks after they’ve both vented about work for a while.

“Refusing to have sex with me,” Stan says.

“Ah.”

“Why don’t you sound surprised?”

“I don’t know,” Wendy says. She stirs her ice water with her straw. “I don’t see Kyle as very sexual, I guess.”

“Ha,” Stan says, and he blushes, thinking of that video, Kyle and the vibrator.

“What did you do to piss him off?” Wendy asks.

“Nothing,” Stan says. “It’s a game.”

“Stan,” Wendy says. She curls her lip a little. “I don’t know if I want to hear about—”

“No, not like — it’s not sexy. It’s just a competition to see who gives in first.”

“Oh, God.” Wendy rolls her eyes. “That’s so — what are you, twelve? Just give in, Stan, you’ll never outlast him.”

“See, that’s why I don’t want to give in! He assumes he’ll win. He thinks I’m less disciplined than he is.”

“One look at your waistlines would say otherwise.”

“Don’t be a dick,” Stan says. “I need advice.”

“I just gave you advice,” Wendy says. She’s in a bad mood, which always makes for a long lunch, and Stan wishes he hadn’t brought up the Kyle thing at all. “Give in. You’ll never beat him at this. He’s too stubborn.”

“Apparently Cartman came onto him when we were kids,” Stan says. He wishes he’d asked for a beer instead of water, but Wendy would have looked at him askance.

“Who didn’t Cartman come onto?” she says.

“Me,” Stan says.

“Well, I mean, who, uh, of the girl or girlish variety.”

“Kyle isn’t girlish,” Stan says. “So Cartman came onto you,” he says, before she can refute that, “Is what you’re saying?”

“Yes, Stan,” she says. “Several times.”

“Did he take his dick out?”

“What?” Wendy’s eyes shoot open. “Hell no, he didn’t! I would have pressed charges. Did he — with Kyle?”

“No, no,” Stan says, looking for the waitress. He waves her over and orders a beer.

“This is what happens when you marry your high school sweetheart,” Wendy says.

“Nothing bad is happening,” Stan says. “And we’re not married.”

“Well, that’s tragic.”

“It’s not even legal here.”

“Right, precisely. Why don’t you move?”

“Kyle’s business — my business. Don’t pretend like you can’t relate.”

Wendy has a small law firm in the Denver suburbs, specializing in divorce and custody disputes. Butters is her secretary.

“Kyle could do weddings anywhere,” she says. “And you should be making arty films, not keepsake videos.”

“And you should be a supreme court judge,” Stan says. “Wasn’t that the plan?”

Wendy narrows her eyes at him, slowly.

“I don’t believe you,” she says. “Cartman totally showed Kyle his dick. Jesus — Kyle didn’t do anything to it, did he?”

“Wendy! Fuck no!”

“Just checking,” she says primly, and she steals a sip of his beer. “I might as well tell you,” she says, setting the glass down. “I’m having an affair with Butters.”

“Oh,” Stan says. Wendy bursts out laughing.

“That was a joke!” she says, and Stan laughs uncomfortably, pretty sure that it wasn’t.

At home, he finds Kyle in the living room, sitting on the floor by the coffee table and spreading out fabric swatches. Stan kisses the top of Kyle’s head and gets a beer from the kitchen before joining him on the floor, his chin resting on Kyle’s shoulder.

“These are for tablecloths,” Kyle says. “She wants cream with brown accents. Cream is so complicated.”

“Yes,” Stan says, and he rests his hand over Kyle’s crotch, lightly. “It is complicated.”

“You’re very immature,” Kyle says, not looking up from his swatches.

“Don’t insult me. I’ve just been to lunch with Wendy.”

“Oh, God. Was that today? How is she?”

“Combative,” Stan says. “And fucking Butters, maybe.”

Kyle laughs and turns to grin at him. “She’s the one doing the fucking, I’m sure.”

“Probably,” Stan says. He kisses just the corner of Kyle’s lips, softly, three times, teasing him. He wishes he hadn’t told Wendy that anecdote about Cartman’s dick.

“I feel so sort of — lost,” Kyle says, looking at the swatches.

“Me too,” Stan says, and he’s not sure if he hopes they’re talking about the same thing.

DAY EIGHT

In bed, late at night, Stan is lying on his back and staring at the ceiling. He can feel Kyle’s wakefulness beside him, like those awkward sleepovers during high school when they both pretended it wasn’t weird to share a bed.

“So that thing with Clyde,” Stan says. “In high school. Was he hard? Was he into it?”

“Oh my God,” Kyle says, but he sounds kind of pleased. “I knew you were still thinking about that.”

“Well, it’s — I mean, what did he get out of it? I’m so confused, Kyle. So confused.”

“Poor Stan,” Kyle says. He rolls over to pet Stan’s shoulder. “Honey, he — had a glory hole thing. I don’t know how to explain it. You know, his toilet issues and such.”

“Why did you let him watch?” Stan asks, though he knows it’s a dangerous question. Kyle sighs.

“You want to know why I did the whole insane fucking thing?”

“Yes,” Stan says.

“Because if it was a — glory hole, ugh, I hate that term — I could pretend it was you on the other side. I was sucking your dick, Stanley, in my head. I came so fucking hard, it was — I mean, I don’t regret it, except for the fact that it wasn’t actually you. Was it?”

“No, Kyle. It wasn’t me. I thought you said — why did you think it was Craig? How could you get off on giving, uh, pleasure to that asshole?”

“Oh, I didn’t think so until after,” Kyle says. “Because he came out of the bathroom after me and Clyde.”

“Weren’t you worried it was a trick or something?”

“Honestly, dude? I hated myself so much at that point that I didn’t care.”

“Oh — Kyle. C’mere.”

“It’s okay,” Kyle says, but he hurries into Stan’s arms and burrows against his chest. “It was just, you know, sixteen, gay, small town, in love with my straight best friend. That rarely ends like this, you know.”

“Kyle.” Stan wraps around him fully, rubbing his face in Kyle’s hair. “Uncle,” he says, firmly. “I call uncle. Or admit it, whatever.”

“No,” Kyle says, and he sighs.

“Um. What?”

“No, no, don’t — I don’t want to emotionally manipulate you into it. Let’s just lie here, okay? I don’t accept your uncle.”

“You mean you don’t want to have sex,” Stan says, confused. “That’s okay, we can wait until tomorrow, or whenever—”

“No, Stan! It doesn’t count if you’re trying to make me feel better. If you give in, I want it be because you can’t stand it anymore. Because you want to fuck my ass, not — ease my pain or something.”

Stan doesn’t see why the two have to be mutually exclusive, but he lets it drop, rubbing Kyle’s back. When he sleeps he dreams that Colorado is poised to legalize gay marriage, but it won’t happen until Stan marries Craig Tucker as a sacrifice. Stan is crying and saying he doesn’t want to. Kyle is harsh with him, telling him he has to do it for the cause. Stan finally agrees, sniffling, and ascends an altar atop which Craig is waiting. Craig is behind a ceremonial wall, only his erect penis visible through a hole. Stan has to hold it while he recites his vows, which he keeps messing up, and at one point he looks down at the crowd gathered around the altar and sees Kyle weeping. Stan tries to call it off, but he can’t let go of Craig’s dick – someone has put super glue on it. Cartman emerges from behind the wall with a bottle of the stuff, cackling.

“Fags!” Cartman says, and Stan wakes up trying to punch him, his whole body jerking.

DAY NINE

Stan spends all day making the tart, between getting the stuff from the grocery store, making the dough and letting it harden in the fridge, bake, and cool, and carefully slicing the fruit. Kyle makes fun of him for being a perfectionist only in the arena of cutting up fruits and vegetables. It isn’t that he’s anal about exactness, he just finds it relaxing, trying to make them all match.

“This is my boyfriend,” Kyle says every time he brings one of his brides into the kitchen for a smoothie or a cocktail, depending on the bride. “Slaving away over a fruit tart for my brother’s birthday.”

“A fruit tart!” one of them says, laughing like she just got the joke.

When the tart is done Stan cracks open a beer and goes downstairs to try to get some work done, but he can’t concentrate. He checks Clyde Donovan’s Facebook page again, as if there will be some Kyle-related update, maybe pictures of him on his knees in a bathroom stall twelve years ago. Instead, there’s an announcement that Clyde’s wife is pregnant. Stan closes the page, feeling cheated and heartbroken, as if Clyde just announced that he impregnated Kyle.

“Are you looking at porn down there?” Kyle calls around five o’clock, and Stan judges that his last bride has departed.

“No,” Stan says. “Working.” He’s actually reading movie reviews for an awful Adam Sandler film that he would never considering seeing.

“Well, get up here and get dressed,” Kyle says. “We need to leave soon.”

The drive to South Park is just a little over an hour, and Stan holds the tart the whole way. He feels tenderly toward it, as if it is actually some ambassadorial representation of what he and Kyle have together: their little house, their hopeful culinary endeavors, and the moderately successful garden, though none of the strawberries on the tart are from their plant. Kyle drives, and Stan tests his mood by turning on the bluegrass hour on NPR.

“Maybe I should just buy a banjo,” Stan says.

“As opposed to what?” Kyle says. He glances at Stan, looking distressed.

“Um,” Stan says. “I don’t know. Did I ever really want to make movies? It’s so much work.”

“Oh.” Kyle reaches over to touch Stan’s knee.

“I don’t really like dealing with people,” Stan says. “You know – actors? That sounds like a nightmare. The brides and grooms are bad enough.”

“You don’t have to do the wedding stuff anymore,” Kyle says. “I know it’s more like – my thing. If something else would make you happier.”

“Maybe I’ll go to culinary school.”

“You do make a good tart.”

They arrive at the Broflovski residence and Stan feels the familiar constricting in his lungs that has happened ever since Sheila and Gerald found out that he’s with Kyle. They used to look at him like he was a sweet boy, maybe a little common but special to them because of how important he was to Kyle. Now they look at him like he’s Randy.

“Look at that, beautiful!” Sheila says, and Stan is really glad he made the tart.

“Marshhh,” Ike says, grinning. Somewhere along the way Ike decided he was Stan’s friend, too, and Stan never minded it, except that Ike’s heavy-lidded bro act wears on him. He hugs Ike, and then, awkwardly, his wife. Her name is Jessica and she’s very pretty in a mousy way, big hipster glasses obscuring half of her childlike face.

“How’s California?” Stan asks.

“Arid,” Ike says.

“It’s tedious,” Jessica says, as if California is a movie she was forced to watch. “We want to move to Washington. They’re going to legalize gay marriage.”

“Yeah,” Stan says. “That’s – that’ll be good.” He looks for Kyle and sees him in the kitchen, having some whispered argument with his mother. “Happy birthday, by the way,” Stan says to Ike.

“Thanks for the tart,” Ike says. He glances into the kitchen. “Is my brother okay?” he asks. “He seems kind of – tight.”

“Uh.” Stan thinks of Kyle’s ass and gets hot under his shirt. “He’s fine. He just had a lot of clients to see today.”

“It’s pretty sick,” Ike says. “You guys helping straights get married.”

“Umm,” Stan says, and he sighs. “Well, fuck you, Ike.”

Ike just laughs and offers Stan a drink. He accepts.

Dinner is a little tense, Sheila extolling Ike’s virtues for much of it. Stan figures it’s appropriate since it’s Ike’s birthday, but this topic isn’t an unusual one at the Broflovski family dinner table, even and especially if Ike isn’t present. Kyle doesn’t take much from the bowls that get passed around, so Stan spoons some extra helpings onto his plate for him. Kyle smirks at him and tugs on his belt loop.

“In my next life I’ll fall in love with a jerk and be skinny,” he says, loud enough for everyone to hear. He’s had a few gin and tonics.

“I don’t get it,” Gerald says.

“Kyle, don’t be silly,” Sheila says. “You’re perfectly healthy.”

“Who wants to be skinny, anyway?” Ike says. He’s gained a bit of weight himself since finishing his PhD at twenty-three.

“Your wife is skinny,” Jessica says, giving him a look of hellfire that makes Stan nervous. Kyle snorts.

“I meant men,” Ike says.

“Oh, so it’s not okay for a woman to have some meat on her bones?” Sheila says.

“No, no,” Ike says. “You’re all misunderstanding me.”

“Should I get the tart?” Stan asks, standing.

Stan drives home and Kyle stares out the passenger side window, looking thoughtful, his arms crossed over his chest. There was a lot of praise for the tart and Stan is in a good mood, but he can’t really read Kyle right now. If things were normal he’d seduce him so that they’d both be ready for frantic sex as soon as they crashed through the front door of the house. Some of the best sex they’ve ever had was on Christmas night after dinner at Stan’s parents’ house, in the kitchen with the lights off, Kyle’s hands braced on the counter. They broke a salt shaker in the process, and Kyle made Stan throw salt over both his shoulders, because he couldn’t remember which one canceled out the bad luck.

“You okay?” Stan asks, rubbing Kyle’s thigh.

“Yeah,” Kyle says. “Uncle, though. My uncle.”

“Your uncle?”

“Well, yeah,” Kyle says. “You used yours last night, and now this is mine. So it’s a draw. Pull over at that Denny’s, okay?”

“Denny’s – what? Mine didn’t count, you said.”

“Yeah, but.” Kyle rolls his eyes. “You still said it. I can’t do this anymore, Stan. I miss you.”

“I miss you, too, dude,” Stan says. He reaches over to rub Kyle’s cheek and Kyle captures his thumb between his lips, sucks on it. “But I’m not fucking you in a Denny’s parking lot.”

“Why not?” Kyle asks, Stan’s thumb still in his mouth.

“Because I’m just not. I don’t want to get arrested. But yeah, uncle, okay, me too.”

“Don’t make me go camping,” Kyle says, tugging on his arm. “Not for real, anyway. We could go to a ski lodge. That’s halfway, isn’t it?”

“I’m not gonna make you do anything,” Stan says. “Fuck the bet, okay? I need you – I never should have agreed to this. I feel warped.”

“Don’t say that.” Kyle kisses Stan’s hand, his knuckles, his fingernails. “It’s my greatest fear, that my insanity could warp your sweetness.”

“I’m not that sweet,” Stan says, trying to give him a dark look. “I watched that video of you.”

“Are you kidding me?” Kyle barks out a laugh. “That was the highlight of my week! I thought you were watching porn down there, and why wouldn’t you be, but it was porn of me. Me, Stan. You’re the only one in the world who would watch porn of me.”

“Not so,” Stan says.

“Don’t you dare mention Cartman. Or Clyde. Or anyone we knew as kids whose name starts with a C. They didn’t – whatever they felt, it wasn’t about me. It was about them getting off. Oh, fuck, why are we even talking about this?”

“You brought it up, kind of.”

“Stan.” Kyle moves toward him, as far as he can with his seatbelt on. “Take me home and fuck me like someone who spent the whole day making a fruit tart to appease his mother-in-law. Fuck me like that, okay?”

“Okay,” Stan says, not sure what that entails.

Playing by ear, it involves falling back against the front door as soon as it’s shut, because Kyle is on his knees and tearing at Stan’s belt buckle. Kyle moans when he sucks Stan’s cock, his chin slick when he pulls back, begging, one eye closing when Stan’s cock bumps his face.

“Please, please,” Kyle says, though Stan is already pushing him down onto his back, opening his pants, tearing them down.

“Lube,” Stan says, pushing Kyle’s shirt up until his nipples are exposed.

“There’s – shoe polish over there,” Kyle says, gesturing to the antique shoe cabinet at the edge of the foyer.

“Gross, Kyle, no.”

Stan goes to the bedroom for real lube, and by the time he returns Kyle is on the couch, his legs spread and braced on the end of the coffee table. He’s still wearing his shirt, biting it to show Stan’s his chest. Stan hurries to him, wanting to cover him up, to shield all that vulnerable skin.

“I don’t even remember how to jerk off,” Kyle says. He grabs the back of his knees and spreads himself open further, leaning back. “I mean, I do, but. It’s so much work.”

“Let me do that for you, then,” Stan says, rubbing lube onto him. Kyle goes limp and lets his head drop back, watching Stan work from beneath heavy eyelids. “You’re gonna take so much dick,” Stan says, trying to make this sound sexily menacing, and Kyle laughs, clenching around Stan’s fingers.

“I’ll take as many as you’ve got,” Kyle says. Stan kisses him, biting at his lips until he whines. He’s still smiling when Stan pulls back, and he gasps when Stan slides a third finger into him.

“That video, though,” Stan says. “With the – purple – you know. It’s not just porn. My heart cracks open when I see you like that. Like this,” he says, sitting back.

“That’s beautiful, dear,” Kyle says. “Fuck me now, though, okay, please?”

Stan doesn’t last long. Neither does Kyle, despite the gin. They tumble together afterward, kissing desperately, and Stan moans into Kyle’s mouth when he catches himself thinking that they’ll have to wait another nine days to do this again. But that’s over, and he’ll have Kyle again in an hour if he’s willing, after some TV and ice cream.

“So,” Stan says when they’re stretched out together on the couch. “Vacation? Maybe, since it was a draw—”

“I don’t really want to go to Disney,” Kyle says.

“Ah – no?”

“No, I mean, I do, someday, but this time, uh.” Kyle sits up and tries to fix his hair. He looks sad, or frightened. “I don’t want to go anywhere.”

“No?”

“No, unless, um — unless it’s someplace we can go and adopt, you know, a baby. And I’m sorry, really, I apologize for this, because I realize it’s probably a nightmare to you, but that’s just what I want and I can’t not say it anymore—”

“I was jealous of Clyde for getting his wife pregnant,” Stan says.

“Oh, that.” Kyle looks away, smiling, toward the front door, like someone he was hoping for just showed up. “Well, fuck him, he’s cheating on her.”

“C’mere,” Stan says. He opens his arms and Kyle falls into him, hiding his face under Stan’s chin. Kyle is shivering a little, his fingers digging into Stan’s shoulder. “We could take our kid to Disney World,” Stan says, and Kyle bursts into tears like Stan has given him permission to, nodding.

They have ice cream and watch TV. There’s a lot to talk about, but they leave it for the morning, just staring at some inane show while they exchange kisses with sticky lips. They’ll have plenty of time to work out the details. Stan wants to move someplace where they can get married, wants to borrow his dad’s power tools and learn how to make child-sized furniture, wants to buy a banjo for lullaby-related purposes. He’s never considered that he’s always been part of the kind of team that could get bigger. It’s the kind of epiphany he needs Kyle to have for him.

“Hey,” Kyle says when Stan is almost asleep, blinking heavily. He wrenches his eyes open when Kyle holds his face and looks into his eyes very seriously. “You could have doves if you really wanted them,” Kyle says. “I would let you.”

“Okay,” Stan says. He nods once, trying to be serious, too. “I don’t want them, though.”

“I know,” Kyle says, and he kisses Stan like knowing this has saved his life: they will never require a dove release to prove how good this feels.


	5. I Have Embarrassing Parents

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Randy has an unexpected reaction to the news that Stan is gay.

Stan put a lot of careful thought into how he would come out to his father. If it were up to him he would have just said nothing and let Randy figure it out at his leisure, but Kyle insisted that he shouldn’t go off to college without having a conversation about it. Kyle had been out since freshman year, when he had a junior boyfriend who was in drama club. Stan had hated that guy a lot, and it took him over a year to figure out why. Now he’s with Kyle, and he’s going to tell Randy so at the perfect time: during a father-son fishing expedition on a Sunday, after a few beers. Randy always lets him drink when it’s just the two of them at the lake.

“This is my fault,” Randy says after Stan gives him the news. He looks horrified, his eyes wide. It’s not what Stan was expecting.

“What – Dad, no. It’s nobody’s fault, and, uh. There’s nothing wrong with it.” Stan frowns, confused. He’s having the wrong half of his conversation.

“No, no, son, I’m afraid this was me,” Randy says, and he hangs his head, sighs. “You said – Kyle Broflovski, right? That’s the Kyle you’re, uh. Seeing?”

“Uh-huh,” Stan says. “You might have noticed that we’re, like, never apart.”

“Yeah, I had noticed that.” Randy puts his hands over his face and groans. “I was afraid this would happen.”

“I didn’t think you were all anti-gay,” Stan says, his eyes starting to burn.

“I’m not!” Randy says. “But I just, ah, shit. There’s something I have to tell you, Stanley.”

“What?” Stan chugs the remainder of his beer, so upset that for a second he thinks about pitching the can into the lake.

Randy closes his eyes and holds up his hands in a surrender-like fashion.

“When you were a boy,” he says. “Something – when I’d had a little too much to drink – we didn’t have bathing suits, see, and, uh. Well, I kind of jacked your buddy Kyle’s dad off in a hot tub. And vice versa.”

Stan sits in silence and waits for his father to burst out laughing and admit that he was just using Stan’s coming out moment to tell a great joke. His father opens his eyes cautiously, as if he’s waiting for Stan to strike him. Stan is thinking about it.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Stan asks.

“It just happened!” Randy says. “It didn’t mean anything. But, shit, some kind of transference seems to have occurred.”

“Transference.”

“Yeah. Fuck!” Randy throws his head back and looks up at the sky. “I knew this would come back to haunt me.”

The rest of the fishing trip is pretty awkward. Stan refuses to speak and drinks five beers. He’s so drunk when he gets back to his house that he immediately calls Kyle.

“Our dads fucked,” he blurts when Kyle answers.

“I’m sorry?” Kyle says. Stan can hear a faucet shutting off. “What?”

“Are you in the bath?”

“Yeah,” Kyle says. “What did you just say about your dad?”

“Our dads, dude. I mean, they didn’t fuck exactly, but they touched each other’s dicks. To completion. In a hot tub.”

“Is this – weren’t you going to come out to your dad today?”

“I did, Kyle, I just did, and his response was to tell me that when I was eight he jerked your dad off in a hot tub. Are you not hearing me? Sex, they had it.”

“You sound really drunk,” Kyle says.

“I’ve had,” Stan says, sighing, “A few drinks. That’s not – this happened not because I’m drunk, Kyle, it happened before.”

“Was your dad mad or something?”

“Who knows.” Stan kicks the blankets off his bed, annoyed by them. “Can I come over and get in the bath with you?”

“Uh,” Kyle says. “I don’t think it’s big enough. The tub.”

“Oh my God, Kyle, do you realize what this means? If I ever get in any sort of water with you again I’m going to be thinking of – this. That. Them, and their dicks.”

“Stop this!” Kyle says. “He was probably joking. Or lying, to scare you out of gayness. My dad would never do that.”

“Well – uh! Ask him?”

“I’m not asking my dad if he touched Randy’s cock! God! No!”

“Then I have to assume it’s the truth,” Stan says.

“You sound really fucked up,” Kyle says. “Fucking Randy! I knew this would happen. Something like this, I mean. I don’t think anyone could have predicted that exact reaction to the news—”

“Then why’d you tell me to confess to him? If you knew?”

“Because,” Kyle says, tightly. Stan hears the bathwater sloshing. “You refer to talking about your sexuality as ‘confessing.’ Because you’re fucked up about it, and you’re not going to be less fucked up about it without coming out for real.”

“For real,” Stan says, mockingly.

“You’re such a Catholic!” Kyle says. “And it’s his fault. Randy. Goddammit! I officially consider him my nemesis.”

That makes Stan laugh. Kyle huffs, and Stan can tell he feels a little accomplished.

“What if it was true, though?” Stan says. “What if they did that?”

“Stan, my father was briefly a dolphin. You really think I give a fuck whose dick he touches? In the long run? No.”

“You know why it would bother me, really?” Stan says. “If it were true?” He’s starting to think that it must not be, that Randy really was just so upset by the declaration of his son’s gayness that he temporarily hallucinated a memory of having a sexual encounter with Gerald Broflovski in a hot tub.

“Why?” Kyle asks, and he sounds like he’s not sure he wants to hear the answer.

“Because it would have been cheating. On our moms. And we don’t do that.”

“We? Stan, we’re not our fathers. Whatever they do, it doesn’t matter. I just wish he wouldn’t contribute to your complex.”

“I don’t have a complex.”

“You don’t like being gay, Stan. Don’t bullshit me.”

“I don’t like that word. But I want you forever. And I like your dick, Kyle, I like it a lot. I’m thinking about it right now. Floating between your thighs, like, all shriveled and cute. Unless you’re hard?”

“No, Stanley, the thought of our fathers touching each other’s cocks underwater hasn’t excited me, but thanks for asking.”

Stan laughs again, and Kyle does, too, cursing him.

“No way that really happened,” Kyle says.

“But what if it did?”

“Then I refuse to be tainted by it. Think of all the horrible shit that’s happened to us over the years. By Cartman’s hand alone. And we’re still pretty okay. And we’re still together.”

“I was afraid you might want to break up with me,” Stan says. “Because of incest or something.”

“Stan.”

“I know, I’m drunk. But you know what I mean. Sometimes I don’t think we’ll make it out alive.”

“What, out of here?” Kyle says. “South Park?”

“Yeah.”

“I know,” Kyle says. “But it’s like in Raiders of the Lost Ark, right? Don’t look at it, no matter what happens! As long as we shut our eyes and hold on to each other we’ll be okay. It’s irrational, but it’s true.”

“I love you,” Stan says, and he starts sobbing.

“Stan, oh.” The water sloshes again, more dramatically this time. “Come over, okay? Get in the tub with me, I don’t care, we’ll fit, we’ll make it work—”

“No,” Stan says, sniffling. “It’s okay. I’ll call you after dinner, okay?”

“Stan—”

“It’s okay, really. I mean, you’re right. You’re so right, dude, you’re the only thing that’s right.”

“Take a nap,” Kyle says, sounding sad. “Just – sober up, and. I love you, too.”

It’s actually the first time they’ve said it to each other, mutually, since they crusaded for Indiana Jones and won.

Stan goes downstairs. Randy, also drunk, is watching some Olympic event: women’s swimming. Stan sits beside him on the couch, still red-eyed and sniffling. Randy pats his knee.

“Hey, buddy,” he says.

“I love Kyle,” Stan says, staring at the TV. “And I don’t care what you think about it, and it’s got nothing to do with you or anything you did to anyone in any hot tub, ever.”

“Yeah – sorry.” Randy pats him again, then grabs him for an attempted hug that Stan fights free from, grumbling. “Sorry,” Randy says again. Stan crosses his arms over chest. “I mean,” Randy says, “It’s just – we knew, Mom and me. Sheila told us and stuff.”

“Then how come you acted—”

“‘Cause I’ve been thinking about it since then! That thing I did that I regretted. I mean, I regretted it a lot. I don’t want you to have regrets.”

“This isn’t something that I’m doing ‘cause I’m drunk and bored,” Stan says. “That’s everything else I do. Kyle is real – he’s the whole point.”

“Well, that’s good,” Randy says, patting Stan’s back.

“You don’t mean that.”

“I do so! Hey, look at me.”

Stan does, grudgingly. His father’s hair has started to go gray in places, and his mustache has, too.

“I just want you to be happy,” Randy says, and he squeezes Stan’s shoulder. “If a dick and balls are involved in your happiness, what the hell do I care? Have at it.”

“Have at it.”

“I didn’t mean – shit, Stanley. I’m a little buzzed right now. My words aren’t coming out right. That, uh, may have been the case earlier, too.”

“I know,” Stan says, and he means it kind of sympathetically. He slumps back against the couch and looks at the TV. Randy does, too, and they watch people swimming until the commercial break.

“Is everything okay in here?” Sharon asks from the kitchen doorway, and her tone indicates that she’s been eavesdropping and Randy is in trouble.

“Yes,” Stan says.

“Totally,” Randy says. “Hey – Sharon? You wanna get me another beer?” He holds up his empty can.

“Funny,” she says, and slips back into the kitchen.

“Relationships are hard,” Randy says.

“Eh,” Stan says. “I think I’m good at them.”

He thinks of Kyle getting out of his bath, drying off in his bedroom and putting on deodorant, fretting. Stan will call him in a minute and tell him everything is fine. He remembers watching Raiders with Kyle when they were kids, and Kyle’s outrage about how easy it was for Indy and Marion to avoid being annihilated: they only had to close their eyes? Stan had appreciated that it was that easy, that the good guys just knew what to do.

“By the way,” Randy says. “If you could not mention that to your mother—”

“Jesus, Dad! Like I would!”

“Well, I mean, she knows about it, just, it’s kind of a sore subject.”

“I’ll refrain from mentioning it at dinner, then.”

Three years later Kyle grabs Stan’s dick while they’re sitting in a hot tub together during a ski trip in Aspen, and Stan thinks of that fishing trip, what his dad said. He puts his hand over Kyle’s and pulls him closer, because fuck it: they kept their eyes closed against the bad stuff long enough to escape South Park.


	6. I Live a Double Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kyle's attempts to diet are foiled by his oldest nemisis.

Stan’s schedule was far more irregular than Kyle’s, so it happened that when Kyle came home early on a Friday afternoon, his eyes bloated from sobbing and his tie hanging halfway off, Stan was on the couch eating hummus with pieces of stale pita bread. Kyle had been looking forward to having that leftover hummus when he got home from work, but now he had more pressing concerns.

“What’s wrong?” Stan asked, speaking with his mouth full as he rose from the couch.

“I was right,” Kyle said, and his eyes got wet again. “About the new management. They brought someone else in. I’m laid – laid off, I’m unemployed.”

Kyle sunk to his knees and cried while Stan held him. He had really come to love that job, though it was nothing like what he’d thought he would do with his life. He had gotten a job as a front desk clerk at the Pinecrest Lodge when he was just out of college. Stan had been playing for the Arizona Cardinals at the time, and Kyle was miserably lonely, obsessing over the few drunken trysts they’d had during college, which were never discussed and, as far as he could tell, barely remembered by Stan. Kyle had hated the Pinecrest for being part of a life he didn’t want, but then Stan was cut from the team and Kyle got him a job doing room service deliveries, and suddenly the Pinecrest was something close to paradise. They would fuck in unbooked rooms on their breaks and sneak into the hot tub late at night, after the lights on the pool deck had been turned off. His memories of working there with Stan and how those months cemented what would eventually become their relationship might be why Kyle stayed on for so long, graduating to front desk manager, guest relations manager, and finally becoming the overseeing manager for the entire hotel. When Marriott bought the property he hoped they would value his history with the place, but he’d suspected that they wouldn’t.

“It’ll be okay,” Stan said, helping Kyle over to the couch. “You’ll find something else. You’re so good at what you do, and – and everyone will understand, you know, your company just got taken over by corporate assholes.”

“They’re not total assholes,” Kyle said, sniffling. He let Stan pull him into his lap on the couch, though they were much too old for such things, almost forty. “They gave me three months severance. That’s good, right?”

“Sh’yeah!” Stan said, his eyes widening. “That’s great. I think? That’s more than the Cardinals gave me.”

Stan was still fairly obsessed with what he viewed as the Arizona Cardinals’ betrayal of his potential, which hurt Kyle’s feelings, because he knew they wouldn’t have ended up together if Stan hadn’t been cut from the team. Stan held a similar grudge against the Park County High School Athletic Association, because he’d been laid off as assistant coach when the economy went bad and the state budget shrunk. Now he did personal training house calls and manned the front desk at L.A. Fitness in Fairplay three days a week, answering phones and folding towels.

“You know what?” Stan said after Kyle had changed into a t-shirt and flannel pants, eaten half a bacon and onion pizza and finished most of a bottle of pinot gris that he’d been saving for a weekend dinner party that he now wanted to cancel. “Now you can get back to your art!” Stan said, squeezing him. Kyle was again in Stan’s lap.

“Oh, God,” Kyle said. “Don’t even joke about that. I have to start looking for a new job tomorrow. A real job.”

“Well, okay – yes,” Stan said. He left most of the household financial management to Kyle, but he knew as well as Kyle did that they couldn’t survive on what Stan brought in. “But in the meantime, while you’re waiting to get calls for interviews, you could do art again. If you want.”

Kyle sighed. He’d wanted to go into advertising, to design beautiful magazine ads or conceptualize striking television commercials. He’d drawn comics in high school, and in college he’d tried to make something more of it, but he’d always known that he wasn’t talented enough to be a real artist, so he’d settled for marketing in his imagination. Even that had been out of reach, and it had been a long time since he’d let himself grieve for this.

“You could draw me again,” Stan said. In their early twenties Kyle had done a lot of naked studies of Stan. It had felt revolutionary at the time: Stan’s beauty through Kyle’s adoring gaze.

“I’m so out of practice,” Kyle said, and he buried his face between Stan’s neck and shoulder, breathing in the unfiltered scent that beauty, the kind of thing he could never sketch. “You know what I should do?” he said when he lifted his face.

“What?”

“I should get in shape!” Kyle looked down at his pizza-bloated stomach. He’d always been skinny as a kid and as a teenager, and in his twenties he’d put weight on slowly but steadily, so that the waistline he’d achieved by thirty came as a shock he’d never quite gotten over. “Do you know of any kind personal trainers who might do pro bono work?” Kyle asked, nuzzling Stan’s neck again.

“Sure,” Stan said, and he reached down to squeeze Kyle’s ass. “But I don’t want you to get all muscley.”

“Honey,” Kyle said, rolling his eyes at the idea that he could ever be that disciplined. “I just want to lose ten pounds.” He glanced forlornly at the empty pizza box and wine bottle. “Starting Monday,” he said.

Kyle took a shower before bed, because he smelled like bacon and felt guilty about this on multiple levels. When he emerged from the bathroom with his towel around his waist, Stan was positioned for sex: nude and stretched out across the bed with his knees spread, his hand on his dick. He smiled at Kyle hopefully. There were times when Kyle was almost disgusted by how good Stan’s body still was, at least in terms of how it no longer mirrored his own, and this was one of those times. He reached behind him to turn the bathroom light off.

“This is a really good opportunity for me,” Kyle said as he crawled on top of Stan, his wet curls dripping down onto Stan’s face, making him blink in a childlike way that Kyle found adorable.

“Yeah,” Stan said. “You could take that cake decorating class you’ve always wanted to try.”

“No — Stan. I mean to get in shape. For real. No more back and forth dieting, you know, I could settle into a real routine. I’m always too exhausted from work to really commit, but now — you know?”

“Okay,” Stan said, but he looked kind of wary. “You really want me to be your trainer, though?”

“Well, yeah.” Kyle frowned. “It’d be free, for one thing.”

“True.” Stan kissed him, and Kyle was going to protest, confused about why Stan seemed to think this might be a bad idea, but then Stan’s fingers were digging into his ass cheeks, sliding into his crack. Kyle sighed and spread for him, arching greedily.

“I think I need extra attention tonight,” he said. “It’s been a hard day.”

“Poor Kyle,” Stan said, nodding, and he rolled Kyle over, onto his back.

“Maybe on my stomach,” Kyle said, because if he got extra attention while he was on his back he’d have to look down over his stomach rolls, and even if he shut his eyes he would feel them.

“If that’s what you want,” Stan said. “You want a back rub, too?”

“Yes, God, please.” Stan was certified in sports massage. Kyle had never been an athlete, but he’d always felt like the things Stan did with his hands were specifically tailored to his physical woes: holding a mouse all day at work, tensing up around the steering wheel in traffic, and a tendency to arch his back like a much more limber man in the heat of passion.

Stan’s hands felt more miraculous than usual that night, after Kyle had been worked over by life generally, spat out the other side of a small aspiration that had once been beneath him. He felt floaty and tenderized by the time Stan moved down to assume the extra attention-giving position, and he drooled onto his pillow until he was begging for more traditional attention in that area.

“Fuck,” Stan said, moaning as he slid in. “I love when you’re all relaxed like this, like - ah, God, like I just fit.”

“Yeah, unh,” Kyle said, delirious and gnawing on his pillow, inching his hips back to get more of Stan into him. “You do, you fit, yeah.” They both sighed when Stan’s full weight rested against Kyle’s back, pushing him down onto the mattress. Kyle squeezed him and Stan moaned, nipping at Kyle’s ear.

“I want to fuck this ass all night,” Stan said, murmuring this into Kyle’s ear and moving his hips just a little, shallowly, teasing him. “You up for it?”

“Mph,” Kyle said. “Honestly, no. I’m really tired, dude.”

Stan laughed, and Kyle did, too, embarrassed. Sometimes Stan made him feel like an old man, though Stan was actually the older one by six months, and he had more gray hairs than Kyle, who only had a few. Most of the time they hid within his mass of curls, but occasionally one would pop out and make him look like a mad scientist, sprouting insanely from his hair line. He tended to tuck them back under cover instead of pulling them out, though he knew it was just a myth that more would grow if he plucked one.

“You want it hard, then?” Stan asked. He leaned back onto his knees, pulling Kyle up with him, Stan’s chest still pressed snugly to his back. “Is that what you want?”

“Yeah,” Kyle said. Getting fucked hard was one thing that could reliably make him feel young and still somewhat hot. “Please, yeah, make me weak, wear me out.”

“You want to be my fuck toy from now on?” Stan asked, snapping his hips. “My little kept boy? All worn out in my bed?”

Kyle groaned powerfully and slammed himself back onto Stan’s dick, meeting his thrust like he was breaking a wave. The idea of himself as ‘little’ or boyish was absurd, but he liked it. He’d felt that way once, helpless under Stan’s football season strength, pinned to dorm room beds and wibbling while he got fucked, still vaguely afraid of how good it felt to be so completely dominated. It took him a long time to get the other half of what he needed from Stan, who had usually passed out after sex during the college years. Eventually, during the Pinecrest years, Stan stayed awake to cuddle Kyle and whisper to him, making him feel okay with what how open he’d just been and how sticky he was in the aftermath.

“Like that, yeah?” Stan said when Kyle screamed as Stan connected with his prostate, slamming it again before Kyle could catch his breath, mercilessly working him. Kyle grabbed his cock and started jerking himself, but Stan took his hand away, replacing it with his own, his teeth closing around Kyle’s earlobe as he rode him hard. Kyle made a pathetically overwhelmed sound when he came, and he sunk down to bury his face in the blankets while Stan finished, letting Stan see the full extent of his submission. Kyle’s face was on fire by the time Stan was through, his fingers digging into Kyle’s hips while he unloaded. Stan always made a sort of surprised, goofy noise when he came, like someone had just pushed him off the end of a diving board. Kyle found it terribly endearing.

Afterward, Kyle felt more awake than he’d expected to. Stan was clearly flagging, trying to kiss Kyle and just sort of mouthing at him. Kyle stroked Stan’s hair while they clung to each other, still breathing hard, the blankets twisted around their legs.

“Fuck,” Kyle said. “What are we going to do?”

“Hmm?”

“About money. Stan. Three months is going to fly by—”

“Don’t worry,” Stan said. “You’re Kyle. You’re good at figuring things out.”

“You might have to take more shifts at the gym,” Kyle said, not happy with that response. “Or pick up more training clients.”

“Kay,” Stan said, and he yawned. “Can I confess something?”

“Sure,” Kyle said, warily.

“I’m really glad I’ll see you more, dude. They were working you too hard, and for what? You never liked that job.”

“I did,” Kyle said. “I had — I was nostalgic about that place. I wanted to treat it right.” He’d felt that way because of his memories of Stan in his little housekeeping uniform, black jacket and tie, wheeling carts bearing fake silver dishes and tiny vases with carnations in them.

“You’ll be fine,” Stan said, and then he was asleep.

Kyle couldn’t sleep, so he extracted himself from Stan and wandered into the office they shared. Most of it was occupied with Stan’s training equipment, and there were some cheap bookshelves that housed Kyle’s old college textbooks and the novels he’d collected over the years. He pulled out an anthology of abstract expressionism that his mother had gotten him for Hanukkah when he was in high school. He grinned when he opened the book to a random page and found a collection of notebook paper there.

He’d drawn his comics in pencil, so the images were faded in places, but he remembered the plot lines as he flipped through them. His comic had been called The Adventures of Fat Ass and White Trash. It starred Kenny and Cartman and was his most dearly kept secret with Stan. White Trash was actually the hero of the comic, always trying to do the right thing or get ahead honestly while Fat Ass intervened and spoiled his plans, but when Kenny found the comics in Kyle’s backpack senior year he didn’t take his role in them as a compliment. It still sat heavy in Kyle’s chest, remembering how his friendship with Kenny had ended. Now Kenny lived in Boulder, selling cars, and they weren’t even Facebook friends.

“I was such an asshole in high school,” Kyle said at breakfast the next morning. Stan was dressed for his first appointment, in a tight Under Armor shirt and black karate pants. He was barefoot, eating turkey sausage and eggs.

“You were not an asshole,” Stan said. “What are you talking about?”

“That White Trash comic,” Kyle said. “And just — I was so judgy. I mean, I know I still am. I’ve been thinking that I should really use this employment hiatus to make my whole self over, you know? I’m almost forty, Stan.”

Stan finished chewing some sausage and swallowed, frowning. “So?”

“So, look at me! Aside from you, what do I have? Not that this relationship wouldn’t be the pinnacle of my achievements anyway, but I’m not really going to end up your overfed kept boy, okay?”

“Dude,” Stan said, and he reached over to touch Kyle’s wrist. “That was just a sex thing. I didn’t mean it, like, seriously.”

“I know.” Kyle leaned back in his chair, observing his own half-eaten breakfast warily. It was a stale blueberry muffin with half-butter, half margarine spread. “But what kind of man would I be if I didn’t take this opportunity to really examine my life?”

Stan looked worried. “What do you mean? You’re going to draw nice comics about Kenny?”

“Stan.” Kyle closed his eyes. “No.”

“Well — why are you even thinking about that? I thought that shit was funny as hell, anyway. Kenny just took it the wrong way. It was a compliment, sorta.”

“Don’t defend seventeen-year-old me,” Kyle said. “Make me a grocery list, okay? I’m gonna go to the store while you’re at your appointment. Only healthy stuff. No wine or anything.”

“I thought you were starting on Monday.”

“The old Kyle was the kind of person who started things on Monday. I think I should start right now.” He pushed the other half of the blueberry muffin toward Stan. “You eat that.”

Stan did, looking sad about it. Kyle went into the master bathroom, took all of his clothes off and weighed himself. He was six pounds heavier than he’d guessed.

At the grocery store, Kyle actually stuck to the list, sipping from a Harbucks latte with skim milk. He was in a good mood about his potential weight loss and this whole new phase of his life, and he was further cheered, as usual, by the sight of a man his age who was fatter than him, until he realized the man was Eric Cartman.

“Are you seriously shopping for groceries?” Kyle said, wheeling his buggy over to Cartman, who was studying canned soups. He turned to scowl at Kyle. They had lived in the same small town since Kyle returned from college, but he had never once spotted Cartman at the grocery store. Cartman was chronically unemployed, always working on some scheme and still living with Liane. She did the cooking and the shopping, the laundry, cleaning, yard work, and possibly the ass-wiping if Cartman was feeling particularly tired. Kyle put his hand over his mouth. “Is your mom okay?” he asked.

“Actually, Kyle,” Cartman said, adjusting his sweatpants. “She’s not okay. She’s lost her goddamn mind and gone to Vegas with some asshole. If she marries him I’ll fuckin’ kill her.”

“Great,” Kyle said. “Business as usual. Okay, well, good luck with that—”

“What the hell is this?” Cartman was eying Kyle’s cart. “What’s that green shit? Are you going on a diet or something?” He smirked.

“That is kale,” Kyle said. “And no — yes. So what, I’m going on a diet. And you might as well know that I got laid off yesterday. Eat it up.”

Cartman shrugged. “I don’t give a fuck about your financial problems,” he said. “That’s just sad to me.” He was looking at the assortment of plastic-bagged fruits and vegetables in Kyle’s cart. “Fuckin’ sad.”

“Oh, and that’s really cheerful,” Kyle said, sneering at Cartman’s groceries. Cookies, chips, frozen pizza, a case of cheap beer, a scattering of beef jerky sticks. “The portrait of a fulfilling life.”

“Whatever, Jew. At least I do what I want. Is Stan threatening to leave you if you don’t shape up? He’s such a vain piece of crap.”

“Fuck you,” Kyle said. “Someone who has to settle for fucking a married melvin probably shouldn’t criticize people in stable, loving relationships.”

“Don’t talk about my married melvin,” Cartman said, and he actually looked kind of dangerous, rising to his full height.

“Don’t talk about my husband,” Kyle said. “Whatever, it’s been unpleasant. Enjoy your high fructose corn syrup.”

“Enjoy eating lettuce out of Marsh’s ass.”

“Yeah, I will, thanks.”

Kyle was fuming while he checked out, and hungry by the time he got home. He made himself a salad with some of the runny low fat dressing he’d bought. The combination of that and the latte was hard on his stomach, and he was curled up on the couch under a blanket when Stan came home looking flushed and radiant. The post-work coloring in his cheeks was disturbingly similar to the post-sex variety.

“You okay?” Stan asked, sitting down beside Kyle. He checked Kyle’s forehead with the back of his hand. “You feel a little warm.”

“I’m fine,” Kyle said. “My stomach’s just upset. Probably because I saw Cartman at the grocery store.”

“Oh, God. What was he doing there?” Stan’s eyes got wide. “Shit, is Liane dead?”

“No, she’s in Vegas with some john. Or boyfriend. Fuck, I promised I’d stop judging people. Maybe he’s a really great guy. The love of her life. What the hell do I know?”

“You know a lot,” Stan said, and he leaned down to kiss Kyle’s neck. “You’re all clammy,” he said. “Are you sure you’re not sick?”

“I’m sure,” Kyle said. “My body is just purging toxins, I guess. Physical and emotional.”

“Kay,” Stan said. “I’m gonna take a shower. You wanna come?”

“Mhm, no. Thanks.” Kyle tended to be most self conscious about his body in the shower. Meanwhile, Stan would look like an ad for men’s body wash, suds coursing over him artfully.

Kyle had his shower after dinner, which was a somber affair involving baked chicken and ice water in lieu of wine. He exited the bathroom expecting to find Stan splayed out in pre-sex mode again, but he wasn’t in the bedroom. The bed was made in Stan’s sloppy but well-intentioned fashion, and there was a sketch book with a bow around it resting against Kyle’s pillow, a box of pencils beside it.

“That’s for you,” Stan said, appearing in the doorway so suddenly that Kyle startled.

“I figured,” Kyle said. “Thanks?” He felt badly for the limp reaction, because Stan looked nervous about this. “C’mere,” Kyle said, holding his arms out. Stan walked into them and hugged him tight, lifting him off the ground a little.

“I miss how you used to draw me,” Stan said. “You always made my dick look so good.”

“It looks good in real life, honey.”

“Well, it’s okay, I guess. You made it look like this — refined thing, like it could be in somebody’s living room on display. Attached to the rest of me, I mean.”

“Any living room would be lucky to be graced by your naked cock, yes.”

“Want to draw me now?” Stan asked, pulling back to grin at him.

“Could we just fuck?”

Stan agreed to this course of action. Afterward, he attempted to draw Kyle, and the result was hilarious in a way that made Kyle wish they had some weed, then some Sour Cream & Onion Ruffles, maybe with ranch dip.

The next day, Kyle had his first training session with Stan. They’d worked out together before, but not for years, and Kyle had been much fitter last time they’d tried it. It had been frustrating for him even then, not being able to keep up with Stan, and it was tortuous now.

“Try not to use your neck muscles so much,” Stan said when he had Kyle doing bicycle sit-ups.

“Right, how?” Kyle snapped. “I don’t have any ab muscles, Stan. My neck’s all I’ve got at the moment.”

“That’s not true,” Stan said. He looked worried. “Let’s do some squats.”

The plan had been to train for an hour, which was what Stan typically did with his clients, but Kyle was tapped out after thirty minutes, feeling dangerously resentful toward Stan for how hard his exercises were. He took a long shower and jerked himself off as a reward for his hard work. Stan made vegetable stir fry for dinner, and they ate it without rice or noodles. Kyle eyed Stan’s beer at the table, and again on the couch when they turned on the TV.

“Want a sip?” Stan said when he noticed this.

“Don’t try to sabotage me!” Kyle said, so suddenly angry that Stan reared away. “You know I don’t even like beer! It’s just, just, I don’t know. I’m fine, sorry, no, I’m fine.”

“Let me rub your shoulders,” Stan said, and he set the beer on a side table very carefully, as if it were a grenade. “You did so good today.”

“Don’t tell me that,” Kyle said, but he huffily took the position for a shoulder rub, showing Stan his back. “Like I’m some toddler who you’re potty training.”

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Stan asked, gently, after five minutes of shoulder rubbing.

“Yes,” Kyle said, and he left it at that, tense under Stan’s hands.

The next day was Monday, and Kyle felt positively alien as he lay in bed listening to the sounds of Stan getting ready for his L.A. Fitness shift. It was still dark outside, and Kyle thought about getting up, but he found that he couldn’t. He was profoundly exhausted, every muscle sore from the previous day’s workout.

“Have a good day,” Stan said, whispering this against Kyle’s lips as he kissed him goodbye.

“Yes, you too,” Kyle said. “Will you be back at six?”

“More like seven. I’ve got a late appointment.”

“Okay, um. Bye.”

Kyle lay there listening to the sounds of Stan getting his breakfast and going out to his car. When the car had pulled out of the driveway he sat up. The sun was rising outside, their gauzy curtains beginning to glow. He glanced at the sketchbook, which so far only had Stan’s cartoonish drawing of him in it. In Stan’s portrait Kyle was floating in white space, mid-page, looking happy.

The emptiness of the day was startling, and Kyle went downstairs feeling like prey, as if the unfilled hours ahead of him were going to pounce and attack. He had half a grapefruit for breakfast, then some yogurt with organic honey. He wanted a bagel, and only briefly allowed himself to fantasize about taking the car and getting a cheese one from Fleischman’s, toasted, with globs of cream cheese. It was a Sunday morning tradition for Stan to bring him one in bed. They would watch boring sports broadcasts – fishing competitions, soccer – or old movies, making out during the commercials. Kyle so loved the taste of high quality cream cheese on Stan’s tongue.

By two o’clock in the afternoon he had applied to six hotel jobs and was going insane from boredom. He was also touching his stomach rolls constantly while sitting at the computer, and he’d stopped twice to do sit ups, his neck screaming with agony because, yes, he was mostly using his neck. He had plain, uncooked spinach and a can of tuna with lemon for lunch. It was painful; the whole day tasted like bad fish.

Around four o’clock he started researching charities that he could volunteer all this extra time to. He had never been much of a volunteer, but he was the new, spinach-eating, sit-up doing Kyle, and because of his resolve to be as little like his actual self as possible he picked one of the least appealing charities to look into seriously: the Humane Society animal shelter.

“So I think I’m going to pop over to the animal shelter tomorrow and see if they need any help,” Kyle said at dinner, forking salmon as if this was not groundbreaking news.

“But you – you don’t like pee,” Stan said, and he winced when Kyle looked up at him. “Animals – those cages, you know, they smell.”

“You’re really trying to discourage me from this?” Kyle asked. He felt testy, and was annoyed with Stan just for having someplace to go during the day. “I thought you’d be happy.” He’d picked that charity because it seemed like the one Stan would choose.

“I’m not trying to – no, it’s good! I’m just surprised you – no, but that’s really good. Maybe you’ll fall in love with one of the dogs and bring him home.”

“Ha.” Kyle was not a dog person. He wasn’t an animal person in general, though he did occasionally long for an exotic pet like his childhood elephant. Anything that didn’t shed, really.

They didn’t have sex that night, and Kyle didn’t touch the sketchbook. He felt drained, listless, but he had a hard time getting to sleep. He spooned Stan, trying to irritate him into wakefulness, but Stan was a deep sleeper, and even when Kyle pressed against him Stan was very far away from him this late a night.

In the morning, Stan slept late. He didn’t have an appointment until ten, and Kyle prodded him into sex when he was still half-asleep. Stan was a good sport, but it took him a long time to finish. He kissed Kyle a lot throughout, which was nice, and Kyle enjoyed the feeling of having Stan hovering over him, doing all the work, so he didn’t mind the extended session or the burn in his ass afterward.

“I’m going to the shelter today,” Kyle said as Stan was leaving, kissing him goodbye, wearing a different Under Armor shirt and pair of black karate pants.

“Bring me back a puppy,” Stan said, and he winked. Kyle wanted to beg him not to go. He really didn’t want to go to the shelter.

He did, though, and it wasn’t as bad as he’d feared. It wasn’t clean to his standards, but it wasn’t filthy. Kyle caught himself assuming that the lady in charge was a lesbian just because she wore her hair in a frizzy braid and had a fanny pack containing cat treats sagging around her khaki shorts, and he chastised himself for stereotyping. He was in a good mood, sort of, as he listened to her explaining how important it was for the animals to have play time with a caring human, and everything was going okay until Eric Cartman walked in.

“What the hell?” Kyle said, flashing back to the CBAA. “Don’t tell me – you’re making a greyhound fur tuxedo.”

“Huh?” Cartman seemed just as disturbed to see Kyle there, his face coloring as Kyle studied him. “What – what the fuck are you doing here?”

“Volunteering,” Kyle said. “I’m recently unemployed, like I said. I figured, while I’m waiting for interviews, I might as well – give something back.”

Cartman snorted. “Man, you are in the fucking doghouse, aren’t you? Dieting and faking like you care about animals? The fuck’d you do, cheat on the bitch?”

“Me and Stan are fine,” Kyle said, lowering his voice. “I – whatever, I don’t care what you think. Just try to convince me you’re here without chasing some disgusting personal profit, go ahead. Selling euthanized animals to sketchy restaurants, are you?”

“Sick,” Cartman said, snarling at him. “No, asshole, I just like cats, okay? And this is a no kill shelter, by the fucking way.”

Kyle spent most of his shift at the shelter socializing dogs and keeping the corner of his eye on Cartman, who was over in the cat enclosure. Finally, while Kyle was taking a food supply inventory with the shelter manager – Mary, the fanny pack lady – the reason for Cartman’s charitable endeavors walked through the door: Butters Stotch, still dressed in his Office Max polo, his LEOPOLD nametag sagging on the pocket.

“Butters,” Mary said, “Come here and meet Kyle, our new volunteer.”

“Oh, hey!” Butters said, beaming for about half a second before he seemed to realize the repercussions of this coincidence. “Um, me and Kyle know each other.” He glanced over Kyle’s shoulder, clearly searching for Cartman.

“Good to see you,” Kyle said, shaking Butters’ hand. He’d been wondering how Butters had managed to cheat on his wife with Cartman for so many years, undetected. Naturally, Cartman would chose to get blown in the back room of an animal shelter.

Kyle left just half an hour later, and he was only halfway across the parking lot when Cartman came after him, jogging to catch up, huffing and bright red.

“Listen,” he said, pointing his finger at Kyle and glaring. “I – I don’t know what your game is, okay, but you’re not jewing me out of the one thing in my life that I actually fucking like, so don’t even fucking think about it—”

“You dumb fuck,” Kyle said, laughing at him. “I don’t give a shit if you’re the other woman. Do I look like I care about Butters’ pathetic marriage? Nope. So just – relax. I’m here for the dogs.”

“Bullshit!” Cartman said, visibly trembling. “You just want to fuck with me, Kyle! You always have.”

“Right, okay,” Kyle said. He unlocked his car and started to climb in. “Cartman, really. Fuck Butters while twenty homeless cats look on in awe, I don’t give a shit.”

“Hey!” Cartman caught Kyle’s arm, and Kyle glared at him, prepared for a fight. He was pretty sure he could take Cartman, feeling strong after two days of sort of working out. “Do – do you wanna hang out?” Cartman asked. Kyle snorted.

“Uh, no,” he said. “What?”

“Just, since you’re – not working.” Cartman scratched at the back of his neck. “And, I, I dunno. We could play World of Warcraft. I’ve still got the whole setup.”

“Cartman, Jesus, I’m almost forty years old—”

“My mom’s making homemade pizza pockets.”

Kyle considered this, his stomach shifting at the thought. Before leaving for the shelter he’d had some turkey slices wrapped in a whole wheat tortilla.

“And she made cherry chocolate chip cookies yesterday,” Cartman said, shuffling. “You know, those ones she used to make when we were kids—”

“I thought your mom was in Vegas,” Kyle said.

“Yeah, well, she came back all crying and shit, and when a guy dumps her? Dude, that’s when she cooks her best shit. Just, if you want to come over. No big deal, I don’t care.”

Kyle went. He ate three pizza pockets, drank two Diet Dr. Peppers and consumed an uncounted number of cookies while questing with Cartman for the first time since they were thirteen. It was pretty fucking fun, but he felt like his legs were made of lead as he made his way back up into the light, leaving the cocoon of Cartman’s basement.

“See you at the shelter!” Cartman called.

Driving home, Kyle felt like he’d entered into something unsavory, Cartmanburger or CBAA style. He couldn’t believe how vulnerable he still was to becoming the worst version of himself. Feeling like shit, he stopped at a gas station and bought two tins of Altoids. By the time he got home he’d chewed up ten of them, and he could still taste pepperoni and chocolate on his tongue.

“Hey!” Stan said from the couch. He was freshly showered, drinking a beer. “How was the shelter?”

Kyle actually had to stop himself from saying ‘delicious.’

*

Having trips to Cartman’s house at the end of the day to look forward to immediately improved Kyle’s attitude about workouts. He wasn’t sure if it was the guilt or the added energy from the high fat foods he consumed over there, but suddenly he was almost looking forward to squats and bench presses.

He was, however, not losing any weight.

“It’s just that you’re gaining muscle,” Stan assured him, but Kyle’s pants didn’t fit any better after two weeks.

He tried to avoid temptation, but it was too awful to go home after his shifts at the shelter and eat grapes while he waited for Stan to return from work. The new schedule suited him much better, and he started to show up at Cartman’s house on days when he wasn’t due to work at the shelter, around the time in late afternoon when his stomach would start whining and the minutes seemed to pass in slow motion. Cartman began to get annoyed that he had to leave whatever quest he was already working on to answer the door, so he told Kyle to just come in without knocking. Kyle usually helped himself to something from the kitchen before heading down to the basement, where they would play WoW for a couple of hours, sometimes only speaking to each other via their headphones.

“Want to get a pizza tonight?” Stan asked on a Friday after he’d just gotten home.

“Nah,” Kyle said. He was on the couch, flipping through channels on TV. He would normally agree wholeheartedly to a Friday night pizza even if dieting, but he’d had some of Liane’s leftover mac and cheese at Cartman’s house, plus a couple of York Pettermint Patties, and he wasn’t hungry. “We can just grill those chicken breasts.”

“Dude, you’ve been so strict with your diet,” Stan said. He leaned over the back of the couch to kiss the top of Kyle’s head. “It’s okay if you have a cheat day.”

“Get the pizza if you want,” Kyle said, annoyed, because every day was a cheat day for Stan — beer, ham sandwiches, omelets loaded with cheddar. He ate whatever he wanted. “I’m having chicken.”

Stan didn’t order the pizza. He grilled the chicken, which he’d seasoned cluelessly with cumin, paprika and oregano, and drank four beers. Kyle felt so horrible as they retired quietly to their bedroom that he seriously considered confessing, at least about the Peppermint Patties if not the whole wallowing in Cartman’s basement shame.

“Are you drunk?” Kyle asked, lying against Stan’s side and smoothing his hair. Stan had his eyes closed. He smelled like smoke and grilled meat.

“No,” Stan said. “Just tired.”

“So you don’t want to have sex?”

“Would you draw me?” Stan asked, peeking at him. “Please?”

“Dude, seriously?” Kyle’s anxiety ratcheted up ten levels. He’d tried sketching a few days before and couldn’t even draw their kitchen window without hating it. “You really miss me doing that so much?”

“Never mind.” Stan closed his eyes again, and Kyle sighed.

“Maybe in the morning,” he said. “I’m tired, too.”

In the morning, Stan got up early and went for a run, something that never happened. Kyle felt panicked as he waited for Stan’s return. Stan was intuitive; his emotional intelligence was enviable and sometimes eerie. He always knew when Kyle was keeping something from him.

“I’m not coming over today,” Kyle said on Monday when he arrived at the shelter. Cartman was already on the cat floor, dangling a fluffy pink mouse out of reach of his favorite cat, a gray tabby with a slightly deformed left ear.

“Fine,” Cartman said. “More brownies for me.”

“Brownies?”

“Yuh-huh. My mom made the Oreo kind. With peanut butter frosting.”

“Well.” Kyle looked down at his stomach. “You enjoy those. I’ve got other plans.”

“Like I care,” Cartman said. “Leave me to my work.”

Most of what Kyle did at the shelter was take the dogs out into the yard and exercise them. He was afraid that the dogs would sense that he was only borrowing Stan’s interest in their species and shy away from him judgmentally, but most of them were perfectly oblivious and glad to see him. Normally, looking forward to a few hours of indulging himself at Cartman’s house and then returning home to greet Stan at the door, this was his favorite time of day, sitting outside and tossing drooly tennis balls to mutts. Today he was miserable, anticipating an empty afternoon of checking his inbox for replies to job applications and an evening of personal training torture followed by bland health food. He stayed late at the shelter, and he was still there when Butters arrived for his time with the dogs.

“Oh, hey, Kyle!” Butters said. He looked nervous. “You’re still — still here, huh?”

“Yep.” Kyle was hosing down cages. Anything to avoid his empty house.

“Eric said you guys had been spending some time together?” Butters said.

Kyle scoffed. “I wouldn’t call it that,” he said. “We’ve been playing video games after work.” He barely stopped himself from saying ‘after school.’ Lately he’d been feeling like he had in high school, bored and frustrated, awkwardly proportioned. Back then he’d been self-conscious about his boniness.

“Work?” Butters said. “Oh, you mean work at the shelter.”

“Yeah.” Kyle eyed him. “I’m unemployed. The hotel I managed got bought out by a big corporation. So I’m, you know, I’m trying to use my free time for good.”

“Oh, sure!” Butters said. “That’s a shame about your job, but you’ll find something else.”

“Uh-huh. Does Cartman ever try to seek actual employment?”

“I don’t know,” Butters said, and he shifted his gaze away shyly. “Eric, he — he’s always got some big ideas. I try to help, but, um. I got other responsibilities now.”

“I know you do, Butters.” He was referring to his children, probably. He and his wife had two.

“What is it about Cartman?” Kyle asked when Butters started to walk away.

“Sorry?” Butters said. Kyle narrowed his eyes, blasting the hose against the side of a cage that was already clean.

“What is it that pulls you back into that — quagmire?” Kyle asked. “Is it just the permissiveness? Or is the the actual filth of that lifestyle itself? The chance to escape back into adolescence?”

“I — I don’t know what you’re talking about, mister!” Butters said, sounding slightly angry, and he dashed off. Kyle didn’t really care; he’d been talking to himself, anyway. He was craving Cartman’s basement: the snack foods, the lack of sunlight, the sound of battle axes clashing together on his headphones, interrupted occasionally by Cartman screaming some instructions at him. More than any of that, he wanted to go home and make a big ass bowl of guacamole while Stan watched, maybe squeezing the limes, and he wanted to eat the whole thing there at the counter, the two of them taking turns greedily scraping up the biggest chunks of avocado, sipping dangerously potent margaritas, all of this followed by Kyle getting fucked over the back of the couch. Maybe then he would draw Stan.

When Stan got home, Kyle made no mention of avocados or tequila. He had used his Cartman-free afternoon to try to draw for ten minutes, then he had sat resignedly in the bath until the water got cold, after which he’d jerked off and moped around in bed. He was hardly in the mood to grant himself another indulgence, and he made stewed beets and poached salmon for dinner. The combination was terrible.

“Want to come with the gym with me tomorrow?” Stan asked when they were doing the dishes together. It was eight o’clock, barely dark out, and Kyle was already thinking about bed. There seemed to be nothing else to do.

“No,” Kyle said. “I don’t want your freakishly fit colleagues observing my workout routines. They’d find it too amusing.”

“Dude, no way,” Stan said. “They wouldn’t even notice you were there.”

“Oh, right, because a pale, bloated, middle aged guy with bright red hair is totally inconspicuous at your average L.A. Fitness.”

“Sorry, Jesus,” Stan said. “I just thought you might want to get out of the house.”

“I do get out of the house. I go to the shelter.”

“How’s that going?” Stan asked. He seemed cautious about the question. Kyle hadn’t told him that Cartman and Butters volunteered there, too.

“It’s fine,” Kyle said. “Sad, you know?”

“Do you want to bring any of them home?” Stan asked, brightening. “I like cats just as well as dogs, you know, if—”

“I can’t have animal dander in the house,” Kyle said. “I didn’t grow up with it like you did. It just makes me crazy.”

“It’s not like our house was covered in pet hair,” Stan said. “Sparky was in the backyard a lot of the time.”

“I also don’t think it would be very responsible, adopting a pet when I don’t even have a job.”

“I wasn’t serious anyway,” Stan said. He slapped the dishtowel against the side of the sink. “Jesus, I know you don’t want pets. I just thought — it’s so random, you volunteering there. It’s not like you.”

“Well, I’m trying to be less like me, okay? I’m too old to keep being like me.”

“It was just a job, Kyle,” Stan said. “Don’t throw away your whole life over some decision the Marriott company made.”

“How am I throwing away my life? What the hell are you talking about?”

“I don’t know, forget it!” Stan walked off, muttering to himself. He shut himself in their ‘office’ and turned on one of his dance remix playlists, blasting it on the old stereo. Kyle could hear the free weights clinking together all the way in the TV room, even with Stan’s music blaring.

They had angry sex that night around two o’clock in the morning, both of them seeming to grope for each other at the exact same random moment, and Kyle had the most intense orgasm he’d had in years, but he still felt hollow afterward, holding Stan and wanting to confess. He wanted guacamole, too, still.

“Want to go to Taco Bell?” he asked Cartman the following afternoon when their shifts were through. Cartman stared at him for a moment.

“Okay,” he said. “But I’m driving.”

The guacamole at Taco Bell was unsurprisingly disappointing, and Cartman insisted that they eat in the dining room, which made Kyle jumpy, afraid that he’d be spotted by someone who would report this dalliance to Stan. He ate a beef taco and a plate of nachos, and joined Cartman in making suicides at the soda fountain: Kyle’s included Dr. Pepper, Mountain Dew, and Diet Pepsi with a splash of 7-Up.

“I feel like I’m twelve,” Kyle said, watching Cartman devour a fourth soft taco. “And not in a good way.”

“I’m not here to be your therapist, Kyle,” Cartman said. “So don’t even.”

“Why are you here?” Kyle asked. “Why’d you invite me over that day? It’s not like we’re friends. We don’t even talk.”

“We are so friends,” Cartman said.

“Oh, really? And as my friend you refuse to let me vent about how I feel like I’m twelve?”

Cartman rolled his eyes and tipped his head back, regarding the ceiling of the Taco Bell with disbelief.

“Ugh,” he said. “You’re such a fag.”

“You’re having an affair with Butters,” Kyle said, leaning forward to hiss this over the table. “You don’t get to call me that.”

“Me and you both know that there’s a difference between fucking asses and faggotry, Kyle.”

“Why am I even here?” Kyle asked. He put his elbows on the table and pulled at his hair with both hands. “What’s wrong with me? This is fucking sick. I don’t even like Taco Bell!”

“I’ll tell you why you’re here,” Cartman said. He wiped his mouth with a napkin. “Because I don’t judge you like your dickwad boyfriend does.”

“Okay, what?” Kyle shoved his tray at Cartman’s, knocking crumpled taco wrappers into his lap. “You don’t know shit about my marriage – he’s my husband, by the way, not my fucking boyfriend. Which is more than you’ve ever had.”

“Whatever,” Cartman said. “At least I do what I want. If Butters is on my nerves I can just send him home to his dumbass wife and kids. Problem solved!”

“That’s sick,” Kyle said. “Don’t you care about him even a little? No, don’t answer that. You’re a sociopath, you don’t care about anyone. God, what am I doing here?”

“Maybe you’re a sociopath, too,” Cartman said, and he smirked at Kyle’s horrified expression as he brought his straw to his lips.

“I have to leave now,” Kyle said, his hands shaking as he stood from the table. He felt like he was in hell. He hadn’t even entertained the idea of hell since Cartman had swindled him as a kid – of course – but if it did exist it would be just like this: a fast food dining room with sticky tables and plastic chairs, miserable teenage cashiers and windows with greasy fingerprints on them, the smell of beef cooked in oil hanging heavy in the air. He pushed out into the parking lot, feeling like he might throw up, and only as he walked past Cartman’s truck did he remember that he’d have to walk all the way back to the shelter to get his car.

The walk back to the shelter was three miles in the heat, and Kyle was soaked in sweat by the time he got there, genuinely surprised that Cartman hadn’t pulled up alongside him to honk and laugh. He collapsed into his car and rested his head against the steering wheel, panting. Despite the Taco Bell, he felt ten pounds lighter from the loss of water weight alone.

He got home before Stan and immediately brushed his teeth, then showered. He felt better afterward, truly cleansed, and he decided that his pants felt a little loose. He went downstairs, opened the fridge, and stood in front of it for a while, contemplating Stan’s beers. Before he could decide whether or not this occasion called for drinking one, the front door opened and Stan walked in.

“Hey!” Kyle called, ready to talk to him for real, the bone-shaking orgasm he’d had the night before a clearly important sign in hindsight.

Stan slammed the door and walked through the living room without looking at Kyle.

“Dude?” Kyle said. He hopped up to follow him. “What’s wrong?” His first thought was that Randy must have been hospitalized following some asinine accident. Stan was clearly trying not to cry as Kyle watched him pull open drawers in the bedroom, yanking out clothes and piling them on the bed. “Stan?” Kyle said, an icepick of dread tapping at the base of his skull.

“You asshole,” Stan said, and then he did start crying, his fists pressed to his eyes.

“Stan!” Kyle ran to him, but Stan pushed him away. “What – what happened, what’s the matter? What’d I do?”

“I know you’re fucking Cartman!” Stan said. “Oh, God!” He winced and turned away from Kyle, who had to hold in a disbelieving laugh before he realized why Stan might actually think that.

“Okay, no,” Kyle said. He put his hand on Stan’s shoulder, but Stan shrugged him off. “That’s not happening. How could you think I’d do that?”

“I went to the shelter,” Stan said. He turned around to glare at Kyle. “I knew something was fuh – fucked up, I could tell. Your car was there, so I went in to say hi or whatever, ‘cause I felt bad for checking up on you, and they told me you’d left with Cartman. He – you didn’t even tell me he volunteered there! Now I guess I fucking know why.”

“No, no,” Kyle said, actually sort of warmed by this, because he’d somehow never thought Stan would shoot right to complete devastation over the thought of Kyle cheating on him. “I didn’t tell you because, ah. Because I was cheating on my diet. I was embarrassed.”

“Your diet?” Stan slapped Kyle’s hand away when he tried to touch Stan’s face. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Stan, c’mere.” Kyle took Stan’s hand and brought him to the bed. Stan came stiffly, avoiding Kyle’s eyes. “I’ve been kind of fucked up about the job thing,” Kyle said. “And I’ve been acting like an idiot. I couldn’t handle the diet, it was too fucking depressing, so after my shift at the shelter I’d go over to Cartman’s house and eat Liane’s baked goods. And play World of Warcraft.” He rolled his eyes at himself, humiliated. “It was self destructive, and I’m not going to do it anymore.”

“You played Warcraft without me?” Stan said.

“I – yes?” Kyle frowned. “I didn’t think you’d object to that part. Oh, Stan!” He cupped Stan’s face and kissed his cheeks. “You know I’m not having sex with Cartman, c’mon. He repulses me on every level.”

“But—”

“Yeah, I know. I was lying, I’m sorry, I really hate myself for upsetting you like this.”

“I don’t even want you to fucking lose weight!” Stan said. He still looked angry, but he was letting Kyle stroke his cheeks. “And I don’t see why you’d – hate yourself, Jesus. What am I doing to make you feel like that?”

“It’s not about you,” Kyle said. “Or – maybe – you’re just, you know. I still feel like I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop, because you were supposed to be this big athlete with some successful asshole boyfriend who looks like you, or, you know, of your caliber, and I’m just really sorry that you got stuck with me instead.”

“What the fuck?” Stan said. “Why the hell would you—”

“Because you’re still always like, I don’t know, reminiscing about the Cardinals, like that should have been your destiny, not me—”

“No, I’m not,” Stan said, looking disgusted. “I quit that team, Kyle. I – lied to you, actually. About getting cut. So maybe I tried to act like I was mad about it to sell it or whatever, but. I quit.”

“What?”

“Yeah.” Stan moved away from him and crossed his arms over his chest. “It’s embarrassing. I didn’t want to tell you, but I hated it. And I wasn’t that good, anyway. I guess I quit before they could cut me, and I just – I could have gone back to college, but I wanted to go home, where you were.” He looked over at Kyle, so wrecked that Kyle had to move closer, his arms going around Stan when he did. “You thought I was just this stupid jock,” Stan said. “You were so fucking intimidating.”

“Uh. No, I wasn’t.”

“Yeah, you were, Kyle! You were all – sexually liberated, or whatever.”

“What?”

“You’d stick your hand down my pants and then act like it was not big deal when we fucked!”

“Okay.” Kyle took his arms away from Stan and reared backward. “This is getting ridiculous. You seriously quit the Cardinals? Why didn’t you just tell me, Jesus?”

“I don’t know, why didn’t you tell me you were eating Ho-Ho’s with Cartman?”

“There weren’t Ho-Ho’s,” Kyle said, insulted. He adjusted his shirt. “And I told you, I was embarrassed.”

“Well, fuck, so was I!”

“Can we make guacamole?” Kyle asked. “I think I just have to be fat now, I’m sorry.”

“You’re insane,” Stan said, muttering this into Kyle’s mouth as it closed over his. Kyle kissed him deeply, moaning at the taste of him. He felt like he hadn’t anything eaten in a month, like even the junk food he’d devoured at Cartman’s house had been imaginary, a theory of food.

“What was the plan here?” Kyle asked, nodding to the pile of clothes on the bed.

“I guess I was going to run away from home,” Stan said. He sniffled and Kyle kissed him again.

“Half that stuff’s mine, dude,” Kyle said.

“I — yeah, well, I wasn’t thinking straight.”

“I love how our stuff’s all mixed together,” Kyle said. He moved into Stan’s lap, tentatively, and relaxed into being held when Stan spread his legs to make room for him. “Every time I put away laundry that makes me happy. How we share drawers.”

“Dude,” Stan said, and he looked so hurt that Kyle swooned against him, pressing his nose to Stan’s cheek, wanting to fix him. “I love fucking everything about our life. I thought you did, too.”

“I do,” Kyle said. “Or, I did, before Marriott fucked me.”

“Nobody fucks you but me,” Stan said. He slid two fingers into the back of Kyle’s jeans, and Kyle was happy to notice that this was now possible without a struggle. “Right?”

“Of course,” Kyle said. “You didn’t really think — me and Cartman?”

“You guys always shared something,” Stan said.

“What! Yeah, burning hatred! Huh!”

“No, it was like.” Stan narrowed his eyes. “That tendency to self hate, maybe. It made you vulnerable to each other’s attacks.”

“I can’t believe you thought I was sexually liberated in college,” Kyle said, so done with the subject of Cartman. “I was still afraid of cocks, Stan. Yours excluded.”

“Obviously.”

“I didn’t grab it that often,” Kyle said, and he tried to arch so that Stan could work his fingers more deeply into his jeans. “Did I?”

“You stared at it when you weren’t grabbing it,” Stan said. “At my crotch, I mean.”

“Now you’re just making fun of me. Hey.” Kyle put his hand against Stan’s chest and pushed gently, lowering him to the bed. “Take your clothes off. I want to draw you.”

“You don’t have to,” Stan said.

“I know,” Kyle said. “But, just – man, in college, those days when I’d get you to pose nude for me so I could stare at your cock. I can’t believe you fell for that.”

“I wanted to fall for it,” Stan said. He pulled his shirt off and started working on his belt. “I wanted you to see — it. Me. And we usually fucked afterward, so.”

It took Kyle a long time to sketch Stan, and he was more in the mood for dinner than sex afterward, but Stan needed extra care and Kyle knew he was craving the reassuring warmth and security that only Kyle’s ass could provide. He took his pants off and turned onto his hands and knees to offer this comfort, beckoning.

“Can’t I see the picture?” Stan asked. Kyle had turned his sketch of Stan face down against the mattress. He wasn’t totally happy with it, but he didn’t hate it, because that was impossible. No matter how inept, he could never hate a picture that he’d drawn of Stan. There was something in every attempt that was special to him.

“You can see it when we’re done,” Kyle said, though it barely needed saying by that point. Stan was already spreading him with lube-slicked thumbs. Kyle didn’t last long on his hands and knees: Stan flipped him onto his back before sliding in, and Kyle squeezed him hard with his still-fleshy thighs, wanting him to feel the new muscle underneath.

“You came so hard last night,” Stan said, moving in him slowly, obviously planning to draw this out. Kyle’s stomach was growling, but it felt good to be something that Stan wanted to prolong.

“I did,” Kyle said, and he nodded slowly to match Stan’s pace. “I love it when you grab me in the middle of the night like that.”

“I was so mad at you,” Stan said. “You were being so weird.”

“So you fucked me?”

“Yeah,” Stan said, and Kyle shouted when Stan snapped his hips. “When you’re being distant like that — makes me want to fuck you so hard.”

“Why?”

“So you’ll feel it,” Stan said. “Inside you, fucking – deep inside you, how you’re still mine.”

“Jesus,” Kyle said, and for a moment he thought he would come just from the low pitch of Stan’s voice, but he lasted a few more minutes before spurting all over himself.

Kyle propped their pillows against the headboard when they were done, and he put his chin on Stan’s shoulder while he examined the drawing Kyle did. It had always been like this in college: Kyle would have Stan’s come leaking out of him before he had the balls to show Stan his work.

“You think I’m this big deal,” Stan said, softly, looking at the picture.

“Well, duh,” Kyle said. “I kind of built my whole life around you. You’re a pretty big deal.”

They went to the grocery store for a bottle of wine and a frozen pizza, ate in front of a dumb ghost movie on TBS and fell asleep on the couch. Kyle woke in the middle of the night feeling nervous about something, and it took him a long time to figure out why: Stan was sleeping in his arms, he was done with the impossible diet, done with Cartman’s basement, done with his old job. That settled it, finally: he was worried about money. He’d blown through a month of severance without a single interview.

Kyle felt so badly about quitting the animal shelter that he adopted a cat and a dog purely out of guilt. The cat was named Servo, a chubby “half-ragdoll” according to Mary. Kyle liked the idea of something that was only half a ragdoll, kind of pathetic but not entirely. The dog he adopted was called Biscuit, a mix of sheepdog and husky. He was adorable and slightly insane, the kind of dog who would instantly bond with Stan.

Kyle was prepared to apologize when he came home with the animals, because Stan had complained in the past about Kyle making major decisions without him, but Stan wept over both of them like they were his long lost children.

Two months and twenty-five days after he was laid off, still without a single interview, Kyle got an email from the Marriott Corporation asking him for a meeting. Apparently, the company-installed manager hadn’t worked out. They offered him a five thousand dollar raise if he would take his old job, and Kyle knew he should be insulted and refuse, because the three months of severance was obviously their plan for retaining him as a contingency, and because they should have offered him more money to come back and save their asses, but he took the first offer and returned to work. He’d regained most of his old life, plus a few strays, and he wanted the rest back.

Once he was working again he didn’t have much time to draw, but he did return to his old habit of drawing Stan before sex as a kind of weird foreplay and showing him the picture afterward. He started drawing comics again around Thanksgiving: the Adventures of Mysterion and the Coon. The Coon was a pathetic foe who was easily vanquished by Mysterion, and the main drama of the comics involved Mysterion taking pity on the Coon when the Coon’s disastrous personal life became apparent. Even if the Coon had recently been making Mysterion’s life hell, Mysterion would attempt to set him up with eligible sidekicks or keep him company while his mother abandoned him for a date. Kyle mailed the comics to Kenny without showing them to Stan or making copies. He knew no one else would really care to see them, and for a month he assumed that Kenny didn’t, either.

They got a Christmas card from the McCormicks that year: Kenny and his wife with their three kids sitting in front of a fireplace, everybody blond and grinning. Kyle had to explain what he’d been doing when Stan read the message Kenny had written inside, under the HAPPY HOLIDAYS! text that was printed in the card:

_I’m glad you’re still drawing. Keep them coming._

Kyle was afraid that Stan would be mad at him for sending Kenny the comics without telling him, but Stan smiled and kissed his forehead after he’d explained.

“You’re so good,” Stan said, and, for the most part, in the moment, a couple of egg nogs into the evening, Kyle believed him.


	7. I Hate My Plastic Surgery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cartman's quest for self improvement backfires.

“I need you to drive me somewhere tomorrow.”

Eric takes a giant bite of his cheese danish after saying so, and Butters waits for him to finish chewing before inquiring.

“Well, sure,” Butters says. School doesn’t start for two weeks, and he’s not grounded at the moment. “But — how come?” Usually Eric prefers to do the driving himself, because Butters drives like a ‘faggy old lady,’ according to him.

“‘Cause I’m gonna be all fucked up from the anesthesia,” Eric says, and he pops the last of the danish in his mouth.

“Anesthesia?” Alarmed, Butters wants to grab for Eric’s wrist, but they’re in public, at Eric’s favorite bakery, and public displays of physical affection are strictly forbidden. “What do you need that for?”

“So I won’t be awake during my enlargement procedure.”

“Oh, Eric! You’re really going to do it?”

“Yes, Butters. This is my lifelong dream, okay? It’s the only thing I want more than ten million dollars. Ever since that bullcrap in fourth grade, with the chart—”

“Eric, you’ve grown up a lot since then,” Butters says, and he blushes when this makes Eric glower more menacingly. It’s true, though: back then Eric was the smallest, but now he’s almost a full six inches when he’s — erect. Just thinking of that word makes Butters blush more deeply. He still calls his a fireman, or a wiener if he’s feeling naughty.

“It’s bullshit, Butters,” Eric said. “Have you seen what some of those unworthy assholes are packing? In the locker room, I mean? Have you looked?”

“Well — no,” Butters says. He tries not to look. In a lot of ways he’s real fond of wieners, but something about looking at anonymous ones, or even wieners that belong to his school buddies, makes him nervous and kind of scared. He’s mostly only been interested in Eric’s, and the thought of that special little guy being pierced by a surgeon’s knife is almost enough to make Butters feel like the strawberry tart he just ate is going to come right back up. “I wish you’d think about it a little more before you make such a big decision,” Butters says, cautiously. Eric isn’t often looking for his opinion, but hopefully he knows by now that Butters takes a very personal interest in his wiener.

“I’ve been thinking about it for the past nine years!” Eric says, pounding the table with his fist. “And now I’m eighteen, so I don’t need parental consent. I’m doing it, Butters, and you’re gonna be fucking glad about it when it’s done, believe me.”

“Why’m I going to be glad? I like it how it is!”

“Only because you’ve never experienced the raw power of an eleven-incher.”

“Eleven! But you always said you were gonna get ten!”

“Well, fuck, Butters, if I’m having my dick cut open I might as well go for the glory.”

Eric looks queasy for a moment, and he grabs for his hot chocolate. Butters feels panicked, but he knows there’s nothing he can do. Once Eric makes his mind up about something like this there’s no talking him out of it.

After eight o’clock that night, Eric isn’t allowed to eat or drink anything but small sips of water. He’s very cranky, and Butters hopes he’ll give in and order a pizza so that he’ll have to cancel or at least reschedule his surgery, but Eric doesn’t even suggest it. Butters is no longer allowed to spend the night at Eric’s house – that’s been forbidden since the blindfolded surprise-in-the-mouth incident in fourth grade – but he stays for as long as his curfew allows, trying to distract Eric from his hunger with sex. It isn’t entirely selfless; Butters wants to enjoy his last night with his old friend, and he gives Eric a lot of loving oral attention, almost breaking into tears at times.

“What if it tastes different after?” Butters asks when they’re both spent, lying together in the dark and watching the final minutes of Butters’ curfew creep closer. Butters can hear Eric’s stomach growling, and it’s breaking his heart – this whole thing is.

“I’m still gonna have the same skin,” Eric says. “Why the hell would it taste different?”

“Weh – well, where are they gonna get the extra skin from? T-to cover the bigger parts?”

“Fuck if I know, maybe they grow it in a lab or something.”

“Eric! Haven’t you researched this?”

“I researched the best penile enlargement doctor in Denver, sure. So I’m in his hands. Jesus, don’t worry.” He pinches Butters’ ass. “You’re gonna thank me, you’ll see.”

Butters just sighs and stares down at Eric’s spent cock. It looks very small when it’s soft, like a little egg in a nest. His balls, however, are uncommonly large. Butters has always enjoyed the juxtaposition.

“What if you’re too big for me?” he asks, very softly. He glances at the digital clock on Eric’s bedside table; he’s going to be late. If they ground him he’ll risk not being there for Eric during his surgery.

“You’d be surprised what the human anus can handle,” Eric says. “I’ve seen videos.”

“You’ve shown me those videos,” Butters says, and he sits up, frowning. “That’s not the point, Eric, gosh darnit! I – I’m happy with the way things are. Doesn’t it feel – I mean – am I not, uh. Tight enough for you? When you’re in there?” Butters’ face is very hot, and it’s spreading down to his chest. One thing he loves about his relationship with Eric is that they don’t have to talk about all this very much. They’ve always just done it, and Butters prefers the natural approach to a lot of discussion.

“Look, Butters,” Eric says, and he sits up, too, taking hold of Butter’s forearm. “I know you feel all lucky and shit that I give you the honor of experiencing my dick – my pre-enhancement dick, let’s say – but we’re going to college next year, okay? You think you’ll always be satisfied by such a small dick? You won’t. It’s scientifically proven!”

“But I am satisfied by it!” Butters says, starting to cry. He wants to say more, to accuse Eric of doing this because he wants to attract more and better partners in college, and to remind him that he has seen big, scary wieners in porno movies and so forth, and they just look like Halloween props to him, meant to frighten.

“Enough!” Eric says. “Stop wibbling. Get dressed. You’ll see – dammit, and this is about my self, uh, confidence and manhood and all that shit. Not about your anal pleasure.”

“Well, alright,” Butters says. “Fair enough.” He slides out of the bed, taking a sad last look at Eric’s dear little fireman before Eric yanks the bedsheets up over it.

Butters picks Eric up early the following morning, and he sleeps on the way to Denver. In the hospital waiting room he allows Butters to give him a hug before the doctors take him back for the surgery.

“Oh, Eric,” Butters says, trembling in his arms. He’s not sure what else to say. He wants to get down on his knees and beg Eric to reconsider, but not with all these medical types watching.

“Alright, alright,” Eric says. He pats Butters’ back as he pulls away from him. “Jesus,” he says. “I can’t wait until this is over and I can fucking eat something.”

“Yes,” Butters says, sniffling a little, and he stands there watching as the doctors take Eric away.

The surgery takes two hours, and Butters tries to read magazines and the book he brought (Swordswelter, a gay romance he’s borrowed from Kyle), but he can’t concentrate on anything. When Eric’s doctor emerges Butters jumps out of his seat. The doctor takes Butters back to Eric’s recovery room, where Eric is groggy and moaning. Butters hurries to him, glancing at the blanket over his legs. The mound of bandages over his crotch makes him look like he’s got a diaper on under there.

“Can you see it?” Eric asks when Butters brushes his bangs off of his forehead. “Does it look real?”

“It’s covered up, Eric, it’s healing. Oh, geez, I’m glad you’re alright.” He kisses Eric’s face, though the nurse is watching. Eric seems too out of it to care.

“‘Course I’m alright Butters, Jesus, people get this done all the time.”

“Do they?” Butters sniffles and takes Eric’s hand. “Does it hurt?”

“Neh,” Eric says. “I feel like shit, though. I think I’m hungry. Can I eat?” he asks the nurse, who confirms that he should most certainly eat once he starts taking his pain pills. She gives Butters a lot of instructions about how to care for Eric during his recovery, and Butters begins to wish Eric had let Liane come along. He won’t be with Eric all the time, though he wishes he could be, especially while Eric is all fragile and hurting.

“Can’t we tell your mom what you did?” Butters asks as they’re driving away from the hospital, headed toward the nearest McDonalds.

“Yeah, Butters, sure,” Eric says. “And then we’ll tell your dad, too, so he can know the exact dimensions of the cock his son is taking.”

“Eric!”

“Well, Jesus, Butters — of course I’m not telling my mom! I don’t talk to her about my dick! God!”

Eric is in a bad mood even after he’s been placated with McDonalds, and halfway back to Denver he throws up all over Butters’ car.

“That’s okay,” Butters says, rubbing Eric’s knee. “Ah — you want me to pull over?”

“No, Butters, I’ll just ride like this, with puke all over me—”

“Okay, okay!”

By the time they reach Eric’s house Butters feels like he’s been in the car for days. Eric can’t really walk, but he refused crutches at the hospital. He uses Butters as his crutch instead, leaning on him until Butters can barely walk himself.

“Is everything okay, hon?” Liane asks from the couch. Butters is embarrassed to see that she’s reading the last novel he borrowed from Kyle; he leaves them at Eric’s house until he’s done, because he could never bring that sort of thing home.

“I’m fine, Mom,” Eric says. “I just got kicked in the balls really hard.”

“Oh! Do you need a Tylenol?”

“I’ve got some already,” Eric says. He actually has much stronger pain killers, and almost as soon as Butters lowers him into the bed, he’s asleep. Butters spends the rest of his afternoon watching over Eric, his eyes wandering down to the diaper-like bandages at times. He imagines a kind of King Kong lurking behind them, something that will pound its chest and charge him when unleashed.

Over the next few weeks Eric is often grumpy and hissing with pain, and Butters does everything he can to try to make him feel better. He brings Eric treats, spending almost all of his allowance on goodies from the bakery and bags of fast food. Eric mostly stays in bed, and his mother doesn’t get suspicious or ask him if he needs to see a doctor, because Eric generally spends the last two weeks before school starts sulking in bed, mourning the freedom of the summer.

Finally, on the Saturday before school starts, Eric gets the okay from his doctor to remove the bandages. He’s allowed to do so himself, at home, and encouraged to come in for a check up if he spots any irregular swelling or bruising. Butters is on the verge of tears as he helps Eric unwind the smelly bandages. He’s kneeling down to do so while Eric sits on the bed, and he’s afraid of the moment when he’ll come face to face with Eric’s new largeness.

“Whoa!” Eric exclaims, beaming down at it while Butters inches away, still on his knees. “Look at that, Jesus Christ!”

Butters looks, unable to take his eyes away. Eric’s new wiener hangs almost six inches while soft, arching over his balls as if they’re an inadequate pillow. It’s fatter, too, and raw-looking, all pink.

“Damn,” Eric says, and he touches it tentatively. “Well.” He looks up at Butters. “Want to try it out? I can’t do full on fucking for another week, but you could lick it.”

“Ah — okay.”

It’s already growing as Butters approaches, walking on his knees. He knows he won’t be able to fit that in his mouth. One thing he loved about the old one was that it fit his mouth just right, so Eric could really give it to him without choking him.

“Be careful around the scars,” Eric says when Butters’ tongue sneaks out to lap at the tip. It tastes the same, though tainted by the cottony bandage.

“Do you wanna maybe wash it first?” Butters asks, backing away.

“Oh, shit,” Eric says. “Sorry, B-butts. I was getting ahead of myself — yeah, whoa, that fucker smells like — like it’s been out in the woods chopping down trees for a few days, you know what I mean? Lumberjackin’ it?”

“Uh,” Butters says. “Sure, yeah, I guess I can see that.”

Butters assists Eric in the shower, and it would be kind of nice, cleaning him, all anointing-like, but just the weight of the thing in Butters’ hand is daunting. It’s grown to its new full length under his ministrations, and it would be comical in its enormity if Butters didn’t have to contemplate fitting it inside him.

“Goddammit!” Eric says when they’re back in his room. He’s at his desk, measuring himself with an old Wellington Bear ruler. “Ten and a quarter inches. I told them I wanted eleven!”

“I think it looks plenty big,” Butters says from the bed, glumly.

“Whatever,” Eric says, and he tosses the ruler onto his desk. “Let’s try it out.” He walks to the bed, moving awkwardly, as if his center of balance has shifted. Butters supposes it could just be due to his persisting erection, which is quickly pointed at Butters’ face.

“I don’t know if I can open that wide,” Butters says when the swollen fireman’s helmet bumps his lips.

“Just try,” Eric says. He’s breathing hard, shaking a little. “Jesus Christ, just the — the sight of it. It makes your face look small.”

Butters closes his eyes while Eric rubs his monstrous wiener on his face, smearing precome in places. Butters has always liked this, but it’s a whole different ballgame with the size change. Just being in the room with this thing is making him claustrophobic.

All he has to do is lap at it a little and Eric comes, and Butters is very glad when he spurts out the same amount he has always has, more or less. He’d feared a fire hose type situation.

“Did it feel as good as before?” Butters asks as they sink down to the sheets together, Eric still panting.

“Totally,” Eric says. “Especially after two weeks, shit!” He opens his eyes, allowing Butters to nuzzle at him; at least this part is the same. “I usually only have to put up with that no sex crap when you’re grounded.” He reaches down between Butters’ legs and frowns when he feels that he’s not hard. “What’s up with this?”

“Oh — just, I was nervous, I guess.” Butters clamps his thighs together around Eric’s hand. “Can we just cuddle?”

“Fine,” Eric says, but he doesn’t look appeased. Butters pets him until he’s napping. He’s trying to remain calm, but he feels like his whole world is irreversibly altered. He supposes it is: he’s going to have to get used to this new fireman sooner or later. Eric might be a little selfish when it comes to sex, but he won’t like it one bit if Butters can’t get hard for him.

It does begin to grow on him throughout the week, especially as a kind of after school snack, something that eases the stress of the day, though it’s mostly just being in Eric’s bed that does that. It’s not the wiener-related activities that Butters looks forward to much as the kissing and their little chats, all the coziness that he once never would have expected from his time with Eric. As they got older Butters realized that Eric was craving acceptance as much as he was, and that he would take it in the form of physical affection, whether it was watching Butters come in his hand or allowing Butters to kiss his neck and whisper that he smelled good.

“Well, tonight’s the night,” Eric says on their first Saturday together as high school seniors. They’re watching I, Robot on TV in Eric’s basement, and Butters swoons toward Eric when he reaches under Butters’ shirt to rub his stomach.

“The night for what?” Butters asks, afraid that he knows.

“Anal sex,” Eric says. “At last.” He has a look of maniacal excitement in his eyes that makes Butters’ stomach drop.

“Eh— Eric, you know you have to be real careful with me—”

“Duh, Butters!” Eric presses his face to Butters’ cheek, staring deeply into his eyes. “It’s like you’ve been re-virginized, in a way,” he says, his voice trembling.

“Oh — sure.” Butters wasn’t this nervous when Eric took his actual virginity. It was just last summer, in Eric’s bed, and Butters was begging for it, squirming on two of Eric’s fat fingers. Eric was the one who’d been reluctant. It took Butters a while to figure out that he’d been afraid his wiener would not prove satisfactory.

“We might have to work up to it all weekend,” Eric says as he unbuttons his pants. “But we should at least try to get the tip in tonight.”

“Sure,” Butters says, trying not to let his lack of enthusiasm show. He’s had several bad dreams that Eric’s Frankenstein dick comes apart inside him, and in his dreams he’s pulled out stray limbs, an ear.

Once they’re both undressed and under the quilt that they use for cover during basement sex, Butters begins to feel more optimistic about this endeavor. He’s got Eric’s finger inside him, Eric’s tongue in his mouth, and he has missed having sex this way, wrapping his thighs around Eric’s hips and falling open for him. He’s into it until he feels the first press of the artificially fattened head.

“W-wait a second!” He puts his hand on Eric’s chest, his heartbeat going from fast to slamming. “Ah — I don’t know, Eric, it feels, um, you know. Too big.”

“Well, of course it’s gonna feel that way at first! Jesus, you’ll never get used it if you don’t try.”

“But what if I just don’t want that thing in me?” Butters asks, rushing the words out. His eyes sting when Eric’s narrow.

“That thing, Butters?”

“Well — um, you know, it’s not you, not really, not like the old one was!”

“What the hell is this?” Eric asks, sitting up. “It is so me, I paid three thousand bucks hard earned bucks for it! Do you know how long it took me to siphon that out of my mom’s retirement fund? You think that kind of high level accounting is easy for a non-Jew?”

“I’m sorry,” Butters says, and he starts crying harder, because he really didn’t want to ruin things. It’s just that he wants that over-sized wiener in him even less. “I just — you wouldn’t want to do something I didn’t like. Would you?” Butters has been afraid to ask. Eric huffs and yanks the quilt away from Butters, wrapping it around himself.

“Why the hell can’t you just be happy for me?” he asks. “This is the realization of a dream, Butters. This is what dicks are supposed to be like!”

“Mine’s not like that,” Butters says. “Does that mean you don’t like it?”

“Ugh, God, your dick is fine. Quit trying to make this about you!”

“It is about me, Eric! It’s our sex life!”

“Boys?” They must have been getting kind of loud; that’s Liane, shouting from the top of the basement stairs. “Everything alright down there?”

“Yeah, Mom,” Eric says. “Butters was just going home.”

“Eric!”

“I said Butters was just going home.” Eric turns away from him, scowling at the TV. Butters dresses while crying. He feels empty, lonely already, but he’s not going to stay if Eric refuses to respect his feelings on this issue.

On Sunday he goes to church with his parents and prays for a solution to this problem. At school on Monday, Eric avoids him and Butters feels worthless. He’s holding back tears at lunch, hoping no one will notice, but of course Stan does.

“Dude, what’s wrong?” he asks.

“What’s Cartman done now?” Kyle says.

“N-nothing,” Butters says. He nibbles at his sandwich and glances over his shoulder at the table where Eric is sitting between Kenny and Craig. He’s laughing about something, looking very carefree.

“Oh, Jesus,” Stan says. “Is this about his operation?”

“Stan, I am eating,” Kyle says.

“It’s just not what I’m used to!” Butters says. “I thought I could get used to it, maybe, but the truth is I don’t even want to try! I want his old fireman back.” Butters puts his sandwich down and grabs a napkin, blotting at the corners of his eyes.

“Did you just call his dick a fireman?” Kyle asks, his lip raising a little.

“Cartman broke up with you because you don’t want to have sex?” Stan says. “That’s so lame, dude, I’m sorry.”

“It’s not that I don’t want to!” Butters says. “It’s just — I don’t want to have sex, um. With that.”

“Are you seriously surprised?” Kyle says. “He’s so shallow. To put it kindly. We’re seniors, just — try to forget him.”

“Do you think Kenny might let him put it in?” Butters asks, leaning over the table to whisper. Kyle groans and holds his soda can over his face, recoiling.

“No way,” Stan says, but he looks uncertain, like he’s concerned that this might happen, too.

Throughout the week, Butters keeps a close eye on Eric and Kenny. They’re definitely spending more time together, but it might just be because Eric wants to avoid Butters, who never really bonded with Kenny the way he did with Stan and Kyle, or Eric. Kenny always seemed a little bit like the personification of those over-large wieners in porn movies: crass and fearless, out there for all to see, often sticky.

“Hey,” Butters says when he finally works up the nerve to approach Kenny at his locker. Kenny is fixing his hair in the little mirror that he keeps on the door. He’s very good-looking, tall, and he has one of the biggest naturally occurring wieners in the senior class, according to Cartman, who has kept careful tabs on all of their classmates’ sizes over the years. Butters’ average-sized one falls between Craig’s and Kyle’s on the current version of the master list.

“‘Sup, dude?” Kenny says, still focused on his hair. He has lots of girlfriends and boyfriends, sex partners of all ages. He calls himself pansexual, and Butters wants to look up what that means, but he can’t do it at school and certainly not at home, where his parents vigilantly monitor his Googling.

“Um, I was just wondering,” Butters says. “If, if. Um. So – have you seen Eric’s new wiener?” he blurts, and this finally gets Kenny’s attention, his eyes sliding from his reflection to Butters.

“Oh, yeah,” Kenny says. “I think he’s showed pretty much everyone by now. That shit’s fucked up, man.”

“It is?” Butters feels he should defend the new wiener, even after all the trouble it’s given him.

“Yeah,” Kenny says. “What’d they even stuff it with? That junk they use in fake boobs?”

“I don’t know,” Butters says. “I been kinda afraid to look it up. S-so you’re not, um. Personally drawn to it?”

Kenny bursts out laughing, and Butters turns bright red, looking down at his shoes. He scowls when Kenny taps him on the chin.

“Hey, sorry,” Kenny says. “Just — nope. I’m not trying to move in on your man. But didn’t you guys break up?”

“None of your damn business!” Butters says, trying to get angry enough to hide that he’s again on the verge of tears. He runs away.

A few days later Butters is walking to his car after school when Stan waves to him, running to catch up.

“Hey,” Stan says. “I just wanted you to know – I talked to Cartman.”

“You did?” Butters says, mortified. “What did you tell him?”

“I told him that it’s not always easy when the person that you’re with doesn’t like the same sex stuff that you do, but if you love them it’s so totally worth it. You don’t even miss the sex stuff. Much.”

Butters stares at Stan for a moment. “Kyle doesn’t like your sex stuff?”

“No, he –” Stan goes pink across his cheeks, his eyes narrowing. “Who said we were talking about Kyle? Maybe, I – maybe I’m talking about Wendy.”

“But you love Kyle.”

“Alright, look.” Stan closes his eyes and holds his hands up. “Kyle – he’s not – he doesn’t like – he’s got some ass issues, okay? And my, kind of – whole thing is – his ass, but – look!” Stan frowns and opens his eyes, his hands slapping against his sides. “What I’m saying, and what I told Cartman, is that he knows he has to get over it if he loves you. And Kyle thinks Cartman isn’t capable of love, but I’ve seen him with you when he thinks no one is looking. I think he loves you, Butters. He’s probably just feeling stupid about doing that surgery. He’ll come around.”

“Thanks, but I don’t know about that,” Butters says. “Eric’s real stubborn.”

“Also, I saw him crying in the smoker’s stairwell,” Stan says, rolling his eyes. “But don’t tell Kyle I was out there. He thinks I quit.”

“Crying?” Butters says.

“Yeah, really sobbing. The goths were just standing there smoking, staring at him. It was fucking weird, dude. That’s why I talked to him.”

Butters drives home, trying to decide what all this means. Is he supposed to go to Eric and tell him that he’s okay with not having a wiener up his butt if that means they can still be together? He’s not sure he is okay with that! Eric just had to go and ruin everything. By the time he gets home he’s angry, and he throws _The Old Man and the Sea_ across the room after thirty minutes of trying to do the night’s assigned reading.

He has a hard time getting to sleep that night, and when he does sleep he dreams of Eric. In the dream Eric’s wiener is a literal fireman named Chuck who doesn’t like Butters and tells him to go away even as Eric beckons him to lick his wiener like old times, sobbing and reaching for Butters while Chuck swipes at him with his fireman’s ax.

He wakes to the sound of Phil Collins.

It takes a moment to realize that his parents aren’t playing music in the middle of the night – it’s coming from outside. Butters goes to the window, rubbing at his eyes. He thinks he’s dreaming when he sees Eric on the front lawn, holding a boom box over his head. “Can’t Stop Loving You” is blaring from the speakers, and Eric is singing along, wobbling. For a moment Butters is afraid he’s done something drastic to his wiener that is affecting his posture, but eventually he realizes Eric is just drunk.

“Hey!” Butters’ father sticks his head out of his bedroom window, and Butters ducks back into his room, his heart pounding. “Eric Cartman! What are you doing! You leave Butters alone, you hear?”

“Butters!” Eric screams, so desperately that Butters starts laughing into his hands. “BUTTERS!”

“Butters is sleeping!” his father says. “Now you get off my property before I call the police!”

Butters decides it’s worth a grounding, especially since it will force him to make Eric wait until he’s earned sex again, whatever form of sex they end up having.

“Yeah?” he says, poking his head out. Eric’s eyes get huge, and he beams with relief. The boom box topples from his hands and smashes against the lawn, Phil Collins’ voice dying off in a slow, eerie growl.

“Butters!” his father says. “You close that window this instant, young man!”

“No, please!” Eric says. He drops to his knees, clasping his hands in front of him. “Butters! I was wrong, I – I’m fucking miserable, I hate this thing, I’ll get it undone—”

“Don’t do that!” Butters says, afraid that further interference would do serious damage. “As long as it works, that’s – that’s something. And it ain’t that bad, I just don’t want it – you know.” He glances at his father.

“Butters,” his father says. “You get back into that room this instant, or you’re grounded, buddy, and I don’t mean for a just few weeks.”

“He’s gonna ground me for months,” Butters says to Eric, who is still on his knees. “Are you sure you wanna deal with that? You could always find someone else who doesn’t, um. Get grounded an— and who isn’t afraid of substantial firemen and so forth.”

“Jesus, Butters!” Eric grabs two handfuls of his hair and pulls. “I only did this for you, anyway!”

“You wouldn’t listen to me! I told you—”

“I know what you said, but I thought you were just being nice, goddammit!”

“That’s it!” Butters’ father says. “You’re grounded, Butters, and I’m calling the cops.”

“No, I’ll go!” Eric says, starting to back away. “Just, just – Butters!”

“I’ll see you in school, Eric,” Butters says, and he winks.

It takes them a few weeks of meeting in janitor’s closets to figure out that Eric really likes to bottom, and once they do Butters thinks he should have known. Mostly he likes what happens after, when he’s sitting in Eric’s lap and combing his fingers through his hair, and he does like the two-handed challenge of reaching around to get Eric off while they’re fucking. It’s kind of sporty, like holding a bat, and there’s also the added bonus of watching Eric strut around the locker room after gym class, displaying like a bird with flashy feathers. It might not be Butters’ _ideal_ wiener, but he feels proud of it, too, because, despite its flaws, it sure does draw the eye of everyone in a room.


	8. I'm Having a Summer Romance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stan and Kyle spend their summer in a hospital room.

Stan and Kyle had continued to grow apart during middle school, but when Kyle got so sick at the start of the summer between seventh and eighth grade that he had to be hospitalized, his bar mitzvah postponed “indefinitely,” Stan didn’t hesitate to go visit him as soon as it was allowed. He did bring Kenny with him, hoping this would make things less awkward.

“What’s wrong with him now?” Kenny asked.

“His kidneys again,” Stan said. Saying so, he felt as if he’d been kicked in his own kidney region. Last time Kyle had serious kidney problems Stan had fought tirelessly – ruthlessly – to save him. The thought of going through that again just made him feel sleepy and defeated. Kyle barely spoke to him unless they were making awkward small talk at the bus stop. Stan sat with Kenny on the bus, and Kyle usually sat by himself, his face buried in a book.

“Oh, boys, I’m so glad you came!” Sheila said when she saw them in the doorway. Kyle looked less glad, more indifferent. He was listless in the bed, plugged into a dialysis machine, his eyes half closed. The sight made Stan’s stomach pitch, and he remembered what it had felt like back then, his determination to do anything to help Kyle feel better.

“Hey, dude,” Stan said, his voice shaking as he approached the bed. Kyle turned his head on the pillow and regarded them.

“Hey.” Kyle’s voice was surprisingly strong. His skin looked yellowish up close. “What do you guys want?”

“Kyle!” Sheila said. “Your friends were worried about you!”

“I brought you some of – these.” Stan offered Kyle a stack of the manga comics he sometimes saw Kyle buying from the bookstore. Kenny and Stan had laughed about this privately, wondering if there was porn involved, or just magical girls in short skirts.

“Thanks,” Kyle said, flatly, when Stan laid the books on the bed, near his arm. He looked so skinny. Stan wondered how long he’d been sick; he hadn’t seen Kyle on the basketball court, in Shakey’s, or anywhere since the end of the school year.

“How long do you have to stay in Hell’s Pass?” Kenny asked when Kyle just stared at them like he was waiting for them to go.

“Probably all fucking summer,” Kyle said, and he looked away.

“Kyle!” Sheila said. She sighed. “We’re afraid we don’t know. Kyle’s already been here for a week – the doctors are trying to prevent the need for another transplant. Kyle’s blood type is just – so rare—”

“Shit,” Stan said, and Sheila didn’t scold him for the curse.

“But it hasn’t gotten all that bad,” Sheila said, and she rubbed Kyle’s arm. He allowed this, still staring at the opposite wall. “They just want to keep him close so they can monitor his levels.”

“You must be so bored, dude,” Stan said.

“Well, I was.” Kyle finally looked at him, coldly. “But now I have a stack of old mangas that I read two years ago, so. Summer is saved.”

“Maybe we should let Kyle rest,” Sheila said, and she touched Kenny and Stan’s shoulders, guiding them away from the bed as if Kyle was a heat source that might burn them. “He’s just found out that he won’t be released this week – he’s a little testy.”

Stan was glad to get away from Kyle’s unfiltered resentment, and his sense of relief diminished when Sheila asked him to stay for a moment and sent Kenny away.

“I think you remember how important it is for Kyle to feel positive and hopeful when he’s sick,” Sheila said. “You’ve helped him so much before, when you two were younger, and he doesn’t – ah. I’m afraid he doesn’t have as many friends as he used to, so. Stanley – I was wondering if you’d be good enough to come visit him again during the summer. It’s hard enough for him to be here, but knowing that all you kids are off having fun without him, well. That was hard for him during the school year, too, even when he was well.”

Stan felt like he was being accused of being cruel. He supposed this all started because of his depression, which might have come off as cruel indifference, but he’d tried so hard with Kyle once he was medicated and feeling semi-normal, and Kyle had been completely closed off. Even when they were getting along, hanging out, Kyle always had his guard up, and he ditched Stan for fucking Cartman more often than not. To Stan it had seemed spiteful, and he put his own walls up. By sixth grade they were only going over to each other’s houses for birthdays.

“I’ll come by again,” Stan said to Sheila, imagining that he might visit in a week or two, when Kyle was less angry. “I’m sorry, I – I didn’t mean to bring him comics that he’d already read—”

“Oh, don’t pay attention to that,” Sheila said. “He’s just lashing out because he feels so isolated. But you could help him feel more included, okay? I don’t think he cares so much about seeing the other boys, but I know he’d like to see more of you, even if he won’t say so.”

“How do you know?” Stan asked, skeptical.

“Because you two were so close!” Sheila said. “I know you’re growing up, but you shouldn’t throw that away!”

Stan felt pissed off as he walked away from the hospital. He hadn’t thrown anything away – even when he was in his darkest places, he’d tried to hang on to Kyle. It might not have looked that way from the outside, but he had tried as hard as he fucking could. Kyle hadn’t tried at all, and what was his excuse? He’d gotten his feelings hurt by Stan’s emotional breakdown? It was true that Stan had never sat him down and explained about therapy and medication, but it was just too embarrassing to talk about, and by then Kyle hadn’t seemed like the kind of friend he could confide in. Stan was afraid Kyle would tell Cartman, and that the two of them would make fun of him behind his back. Kenny was more sympathetic, and he told Stan he’d been depressed, too, but he wouldn’t try Stan’s pills when he offered them. He said he was sure they wouldn’t do any good.

Stan spent the rest of the afternoon alone at the creek, watching the way the light reflected on the water and flickered through the leaves overhead when the wind tossed the trees around. It was a beautiful day, just starting to get really warm. This was the beginning of his last truly carefree summer: next summer high school would loom, and he would have to face decisions about whether or not he wanted to try out for the football team and which electives to take, the shadow of college hanging over the whole thing. Wendy was already researching which colleges she might attend. Stan just wanted to be a kid for as long as possible. He’d already lost almost a year of his childhood to premature cynicism.

Over the next few days he tried to enjoy his free time and the nice weather, but he couldn’t stop thinking of Kyle in that hospital bed, angrily staring at the wall. Stan was ambushed by Cartman during a water balloon war, and he responded with inappropriate rage, chasing him down and punching him in the stomach.

“What the fuck!” Cartman said, and he dropped to his knees, gasping for breath. Butters was quickly at Cartman’s side, whining with sympathy.

“What’d you go and do that for?” Butters asked, and he gave Stan a look of pathetic confusion that made him feel terrible, as if he’d just ripped up one of Butters’ dolls. “He was just playin’ the game!”

“Forget it,” Stan said. “Just – I’m not playing anymore.”

“Yeah, that’s right, fucker!” Cartman shouted after Stan was out of punching range. “You get the fuck out of here! You can’t play with us! Psycho dickwad!”

Stan didn’t care about quitting the game. It seemed stupid and immature, though not in the way that everything had when he turned ten. Back then he’d had no reason for his sudden disinterest in the things he used to love, but this time he knew why everything had felt off for the past few days: Kyle was hurting, alone, and it wasn’t fair. Stan found his stash of unused water balloons and took them home, where he loaded a red one and a blue one into an insulated lunch bag. He added some string cheese, juice boxes, and a mini bag of Doritos and headed for the hospital after he’d changed into dry clothes.

When he reached Kyle’s hospital room, he was surprised to see that Sheila wasn’t there, and that there were no nurses poking at him. The room was still and quiet; Kyle was sleeping. Stan walked close to the bed to make sure that he could see Kyle’s stomach rising and falling with his breath. There was only one bouquet of flowers on Kyle’s bedside table, and they looked a little wilted. Stan was looking around for someplace to sit when Kyle moaned and stirred, blinking up at him.

“Stan?” he said, and Stan’s heart cracked open: he didn’t sound angry, just surprised.

“Look,” Stan said. He set the lunch bag on Kyle’s bed and unzipped it, digging out the red water balloon. “We were playing, but it wasn’t fun. I thought, maybe. If you want, you could throw this at me.” He held the balloon out. Kyle stared at it, frowning.

“Are you crazy?” he said.

“Just, if you want,” Stan said, still holding it out for him.

“Okay.” Kyle took it. “Stand back.”

Stan took six steps backward, making sure he was clear of any medical equipment. He held his hands at his sides and pinched his eyes shut, waiting to be hit.

“No, open your eyes,” Kyle said. Stan did. Kyle looked very grave, not smiling. “You’re an asshole,” he said, his fingers squeaking on the balloon. Stan was afraid he’d pop it and soak himself.

“You are,” Stan said, and Kyle grinned. He threw the balloon harder than Stan had expected, and it exploded on his chest. “There’s another one in there,” Stan said.

“Why do you want me to throw water balloons at you?”

“’Cause, I don’t know,” Stan said. “Maybe I was an asshole. A little. But so were you.”

“So throw this one at me,” Kyle said, digging it out.

“No way, dude. It’ll get on your – stuff.”

“String cheese?” Kyle said, poking through the lunch bag. “Doritos?”

“If you’re hungry,” Stan said. “I mean, if you’re allowed to eat that.” It was what they used to gorge on during summers, in front of the TV at Stan’s house or Kyle’s, during breaks in the outdoor action.

“C’mere,” Kyle said. He was holding one of the sticks of string cheese, picking at the plastic wrapping. Stan walked to him, a little cautious about taking a water balloon in the face at close range, but Kyle didn’t throw it. He scooted over so Stan could sit on the bed.

“But,” Stan said. “I’m wet.”

“Who cares?” Kyle patted the mattress. “I’ve been wetter. C’mon, they’re showing Shark Week reruns on Discovery.”

Stan hadn’t watched anything on Discovery since Kyle had stopped coming over to his house. He climbed up into the bed and opened the Doritos. Kyle did both juice boxes, punching the little straws in carefully. This had always been his job; Stan tended to get overenthusiastic and had often ended up squirting juice onto Sheila’s couch.

“Remember when you’d clean up my juice box spills with club soda?” Stan asked. Kyle snorted. He was peeling string cheese, tipping his head back like a baby bird when he ate it.

“You cleaned up my stuff, sometimes, too,” he said, and he reached into the lunch bag. The only things left in there were the other stick of string cheese and the water balloon. Kyle grabbed the balloon, brought it up to the top of his head, and smashed it there.

“Dude,” Stan said while yard hose-scented water dripped from Kyle’s hair, down into his face. “What the hell?” Stan fished through Kyle’s curls until he found the exploded remains of the balloon, a little piece of shriveled blue plastic.

“Why are you even here?” Kyle said, wiping water out of his eyes. “I’m not, like, dying.”

“I know,” Stan said. There was a box of tissues on the bedside table. He grabbed them and used five to dry Kyle’s face and hair as best he could, feeling guilty. Kyle was staring at him when he finished, looking stunned but soft, the string cheese clutched in his fist. “I miss you,” Stan said. “And you’re trapped here, so I’m gonna come every day and bother you. Okay?”

“Okay,” Kyle said. His face turned pink and he looked at the TV. They watched shark shows for three hours, until a nurse came to kick Stan out.

That night, Stan worried that his promise of visiting Kyle every day would be hard to keep, but it ended up feeling like a default, like it had when they were kids and whoever woke up first would go over to the other one’s house, walk inside without knocking, head upstairs and wake the one who was still sleeping. At least, that was how Kyle had always done it. Stan, often annoyed with himself for being awake so early, would sometimes get into bed with Kyle and fall asleep beside him.

Every day, Stan tried to bring Kyle something summery so he wouldn’t feel like he was missing out. He smuggled in a firecracker just so Kyle could smell the gun powder, and brought him three fat sunflowers he’d stolen from a farmer’s garden, afraid that Kyle would accuse him of being gay. He didn’t, just ordered Stan to dump his old, dead-ish flowers out of their vase and replace them with the sunflowers. When they were little they used to play tag in the sunflower field out by the highway, though it was a long walk from home and they were technically trespassing. Stan had loved the smell that lingered on their skin and their clothes as they walked home.

“Are you sad about missing your bar mitzvah?” Stan asked when it had been a month since Kyle’s thirteenth birthday and he was still in the hospital.

“Not really,” Kyle said. They were sitting across from each other on the bed, a chess board between them. Kyle was trying to teach Stan how to play. “That shit’s kind of embarrassing, anyway. You just get your cheeks pinched a lot. And it’s not like anyone from school would’ve come.”

“I would have come,” Stan said. “And Kenny.” He tried to think of someone else. “Butters, and Wendy.”

“Well. Anyway. Checkmate, see?”

“Oh, shit.” Stan didn’t really see, but he nodded. “I’m not good at this.”

“You’re just not paying attention.”

“Can you go for a walk, maybe?” Stan asked. “Just for some fresh air.”

“There’s a courtyard thing, a garden,” Kyle said. He looked up at Stan, his mouth quirking. “I have to go in a wheelchair, though. It’s their policy. It’s bullshit. I can walk. I’m not some fucking old man. So I never go outside.”

“I could take you,” Stan said. “In the – thing. It’d be funny.”

Kyle stared at him, twirling the queen he’d captured between his fingers.

“Okay, not funny,” Stan said. “But we could – we could make it fun. I could get in a wheelchair, too, okay, we could race!”

“Stan.” Kyle swept the chess pieces up and dumped them back into their box. “Please.”

“Please what? Don’t you want to go outside?”

“In some stupid hospital courtyard with dying people hanging around? Fuck no!” Kyle kicked the chess board off the bed and crawled up toward his pillows, dumping himself onto them. “If you want to go outside, go. I’m not stopping you.”

Stan climbed off the bed to retrieve the chess board. He packed it up with the pieces and put it with the stack of other games that Kyle’s parents had brought from home. His parents were usually with him in the morning and at night, but during the day they both had work and chores, so Stan was Kyle’s only visitor. Kyle was turned away from him on the bed, breathing hard, his arms tucked to this chest.

“Outside’s not the same without you,” Stan said. “That’s like – me and you, when we were kids. All that stuff is our old stuff.”

“Like what?” Kyle asked after a few moments of silence.

“Like – swimming, and bikes, and the basketball court, and fireworks—”

“You did that stuff with Kenny and Cartman, too.”

“Yeah, but they’re not—” Stan left off there, because he couldn’t think of anything but you, they’re not you. He climbed back into the bed and stretched out alongside Kyle like he had when they were little, before it seemed weird. It seemed weird now, but he did it anyway, resting his head on Kyle’s pillow. Kyle turned to look at him.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Stan said. “Whatever you’re doing.”

“Oh, really?” Kyle rolled onto his back. “Well, I’m sitting here wasting away with a kidney infection, is that what you’re doing?”

“Sure.”

“You’re a dick,” Kyle said, but he rolled toward Stan, arranging himself huffily. He rested his forehead against Stan’s arm and closed his eyes.

Kyle wasn’t sleeping, but they both pretended that he was. Stan touched his curls, stroking them and thinking about the first day he came alone, when Kyle had smashed that water balloon over his own head. It had impressed Stan deeply and he thought about it often. It wasn’t like Kyle to admit that he’d been wrong, and in that moment it had seemed like that was what he was doing.

Kyle’s condition was stable, and most days he was just weak and tired, but he usually had enough energy to play a game with Stan, have a contraband snack that Stan had smuggled in for him, and talk a little before drifting off. Some days he was more up for it than others. Sometimes Stan came in and found him sitting at the window, staring out at the parking lot and the mountains in the distance.

“Can I open it for you?” Stan asked one day, looking for the latch.

“They won’t let me,” Kyle said. “It’s against policy, bolted shut.”

“Let me take you outside, then,” Stan said. “So you can breathe some fresh air, Jesus. If you don’t want to use a wheelchair – I’ll carry you.”

He didn’t really hear how that sounded until it was already out, and he felt his cheeks coloring when Kyle looked at him with surprise.

“Yeah,” Kyle said. “That wouldn’t be embarrassing or anything.”

“I was joking,” Stan said, though he hadn’t been.

At the end of June Kyle’s infection worsened, and for a few days Stan wasn’t allowed to visit. When he returned the doctors had proclaimed that Kyle was doing better, but he didn’t look it. He had bags under his eyes and he seemed more frail than he had when Stan last saw him. He smiled when Stan came to his bedside, but it was small and battered, making him look older than he was and younger, too, at the same time. Stan grabbed for Kyle’s hand, and Kyle laughed hoarsely.

“I’m still not dying,” he said. “Though I think Cartman’s kidney is trying to kill me.”

“That’s what’s causing all this? Oh, Jesus, I should have known, I’m sorry—”

“Are you seriously apologizing for saving my life?” Kyle asked. “Dude, I was kidding. They’re both fucked up. Equally.”

“I brought you something,” Stan said. He was trying not to cry; it was hard to see Kyle like this. He put the paper towel-wrapped bundle that he was carrying on Kyle’s bed and carefully unwrapped in, revealing seventeen four-leaf clovers he’d harvested the day before. He’d stayed out until dark searching for them, and even seventeen didn’t seem like enough. “For luck,” he said as he arranged them on Kyle’s chest, over his hospital gown. He made a star pattern there, and put the extra one, the smallest one, on Kyle’s cheek.

“Now I can’t move,” Kyle said. “Thanks,” he said before Stan could apologize for bringing such a stupid gift.

“When are you going to get better?” Stan asked, unable to stand this anymore, the quiet days inside this room with Kyle and his dialysis machine and endless nights in bed, awake and staring at the ceiling, wondering if Kyle was awake, if he got scared at night when he was alone.

“Soon,” Kyle said. He took the clover from his cheek and rubbed it over his lips like he was thinking about eating it, or kissing it. “I can’t do this much longer, dude.”

“Me either,” Stan said. He got into the bed and Kyle moved over very slowly, careful not to disturb the star shape on his chest. Stan put his hand in the middle of the clovers and shut his eyes.

“Are you praying?” Kyle asked, sounding like he might object to that.

“No,” Stan said. He opened his eyes and something had happened, like a spell that was cast: Kyle looked different. He was still sickly, too skinny, frowning a little, still had the same angular features that were becoming more pronounced as he got older, the same matted red curls that looked like they needed to be washed, but he was something else, too. Stan’s eyes flicked down to Kyle’s lips. The bottom one was kind of fat, a little chapped.

“What’s the matter?” Kyle asked.

“Nothing,” Stan said, but his heart was pounding and he wanted to run.

His next visit to the hospital was different. He’d done too much thinking since he’d seen Kyle last, and he’d thrown up after dinner. Stan sat in a chair instead of on Kyle’s bed, and he had a hard time paying attention to what Kyle was saying about the nurse who they called Jaws, because she was mean and had small, sharp-looking teeth.

“Are you even listening?” Kyle asked.

“Huh – yeah! I just.” Stan shook his head hard. “I think I’m coming down with something.” The previous night had been so strange, and he’d followed something the color of Kyle’s hair through his dreams like a beacon, waking up to chew on the end of his pillowcase, a nervous habit he’d had since he was a baby. He hadn’t done it since he was about seven, because that was when Kyle started spending the night, and Stan hadn’t want to be weird in front of him.

“Well, if you’re sick, come here,” Kyle said, and he moved over, patting the bed. His face got very red when Stan hesitated. “Or maybe you’re just bored,” Kyle said. “You can go if you want, okay, I have books and shit. You’re not – my world doesn’t fucking revolve around you, believe it or not. Even here.”

“I know,” Stan said. “Kyle.”

“What?”

“Uh.” Stan stood up, then sat again. “What are you doing for Fourth of July?”

“Are you serious?” Kyle was glaring at him now, his fists clenched around his blanket. “What the hell do you think? I’m sitting in here alone, staring at the wall.”

“No, I – don’t say that.”

“Why not? Because you don’t want to have to feel sad for me? Oh, sorry. I hope that won’t dampen your enjoyment of fireworks and apple pie and hanging out with your friends.”

“I’ve barely talked to anyone else this summer!” Stan said. “I’ve just been with you.”

“Sorry,” Kyle said. He yanked his blanket up to his shoulder and turned away from Stan. “I know my mom guilted you into it. I heard her, okay, that day when you came with Kenny. Is she paying you or something?”

“Shut up,” Stan said. “You know that’s not why I’m here.”

“I don’t know shit,” Kyle said. “I never know how to predict what you’ll do. One minute you’re my best friend, and I’m your best – person, and, and then—” Kyle pulled his pillow over his head. “I’m not gonna go through this again, dude,” he said, and he sounded more defeated than angry.

“You’re still my best person,” Stan said. He wondered if he should get into bed with Kyle, but he didn’t want to feel like he had the day before, like he’d swallowed bees and the buzzing in his stomach was going to propel him dangerously forward.

“Just go,” Kyle said, and Stan was going to refuse, but it was late, and a nurse was bustling in with Kyle’s evening meal, followed by Sheila. Stan knew he wouldn’t be able to talk to Kyle in front of them. He left without saying goodnight, and later had horrible nightmares that he returned to Kyle’s room in the morning to find an empty bed, a teddy bear lying forgotten on the floor. Kenny was there, and he told Stan that Kyle had died during the night.

Stan woke up at dawn and cried into his pillow, feeling as if he’d really lived that, like it had all really happened. He hurried to the hospital as soon as he could, and when he got there he was told that Kyle had asked not to have any visitors that day.

“He needs to rest,” the nurse said. It was Jaws; she had always seemed suspicious of Stan.

He didn’t give up; that was the mistake Kyle had made, and Stan had done the same when he butted up against Kyle’s defenses in the years that followed. He went home and made a mix on his iPod player, though he was sensitive about his music and especially so around Kyle. The neighborhood parties started early, and Stan wanted to pack up a cooler full of pie and barbecue to bring to Kyle’s room, but that wouldn’t fit with his plan, which was to wear pajamas to Hell’s Pass. All he had room for in his pockets was the iPod and a screwdriver.

He didn’t have to wait long near the doors of the emergency room for commotion to cause a distraction: there were a lot of fireworks-related injuries as darkness began to fall. Wearing the pajamas, he crept through the halls, prepared to tell anyone who caught him that he was a patient who was on his way back to his room after an illicit trip to the vending machines. He wasn’t sure this story would fly, but he didn’t have to use it; apparently being a wandering kid in pajamas in the pediatric ward was story enough. Visiting hours had ended at seven o’clock, and it was approaching nine, the last of the sunset still fading. When he slipped inside Kyle’s room Stan was glad to find him not in bed but at the window, his chin resting on the sill.

“Want me to open it for you?” Stan asked.

Kyle startled and turned. It was dark in his room, and it took Stan’s eyes a moment to adjust, but by the time he’d crossed the room he saw that Kyle was trying to restrain his smile.

“You can’t open it,” Kyle said. “I tried.”

“Did you try with one of these?” Stan asked, and he whipped out the screwdriver, trying to be dramatic. Kyle grinned widely and took it from him.

“Let me do it,” he said, standing. “Nice pajamas.”

“Thanks.” Stan stood behind Kyle while he worked, close. In the dark, Kyle looked like he always had during sleepovers, not skinny or sick. He smelled good, like cherry Jello, and he was wearing a t-shirt and sweatpants instead of a hospital gown, no socks.

“There,” Kyle said, and he handed Stan the screwdriver. They pushed the window open together. Stan had just come in from the oppressive summer air, stolid even after nightfall, but it felt new to him, too, when he watched Kyle breathe it in.

“We should be able to see the fireworks from here,” Stan said. He pulled out his iPod. “I made, uh. Some songs for them. Since we won’t be able to hear the music. And the music they play at the festival sucks anyway.”

“Yeah,” Kyle said, and he accepted an ear bud. They had to stand close in order to share the headphones, and Stan could feel Kyle shaking. He slid his arm around Kyle’s shoulders, slow, like he’d seen boys do to girls during the festival, both of them watching the sky. They put their elbows on the sill and waited, both of them tense until the whine of the first firework ascended into the sky and blasted apart. Stan laughed, and Kyle turned to him, beaming now. Their noses bumped together. Stan’s music didn’t really fit the sporadic explosions; it was too mellow, too soft.

“I’m really glad you’re here,” Kyle said. Stan felt like he could feel every explosion in the sky at the center of his chest. He pulled Kyle closer, nodding.

“You’re gonna feel better soon,” Stan said, and Kyle’s eyes widened. That wasn’t what Stan had meant, necessarily, but he tried to act as if it was a promise he’d intended to fulfill himself, pressing his lips to Kyle’s. The ear buds felt suddenly intrusive, and he pulled Kyle’s out first, then his own. They were both breathing fast, and Stan was sweltering inside his pajamas.

“Do it again,” Kyle said. “I mean, ‘cause – it felt, like, good, so—”

Stan kissed him again, his hands cupping Kyle’s face. He didn’t know what to do with his lips: he pushed them forward and Kyle pressed back in nervous flutters. Stan felt it everywhere, like his whole body was a screen set up to display the firework show, every boom and flash reverberating through him.

“I’ll steal another one for you,” Stan said when he pulled back. The fireworks were so loud, as if they were in the room, raining down onto them. “If you need me to.”

“I don’t need – no, I’m gonna be okay,” Kyle said. He nodded firmly, and Stan believed him. “Just keep doing that, if it’s alright, if you want to, you could keep – mph, yeah—”

They practiced kissing for the duration of the firework show, until Kyle’s legs were shaking and Stan had to help him to bed. After the main show was over they could hear pops and whistles from amateur firework setters through the open window, and every time a new one went off they laughed like it was their inside joke, because everything felt that way when they were like this, all tangled up together.


End file.
